The  Dram  A  OF  THE 
Spiritual  Life 


ANNIE    LYMAN  SEARS 


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THE  DRAMA  OF  THE  SPIRITUAL  LIFE 


■■rt^^^ 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    -    BOSTON  •    CHICAGO  •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA   •    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •  BOMBAY  •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


THE  DRAMA  OF 
THE  SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

A  STUDY  OF  RELIGIOUS 
EXPERIENCE   AND   IDEALS 


BY 

ANNIE  LYMAN  SEARS 

w 


.  di  tua  vita  il  viaggio." 

—  Dante. 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1916 

Alt  rights  retened 


3 


3-1 


OOPTEIOHT,   1915, 

By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  August,  1915. 


r,«-     f 


J.  8.  Cashing  Co,  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mas8.,  U.S.A. 


MY  FATHER 

WHOSE   INTEREST   IN  POETRY,  PHILOSOPHY,  AND   RELIGION 

FIRST   INSPIRED    MY    OWN 

AND  TO 

MY  MOTHER 

WHOSE    LOVE    OF    ALL    THINGS    HUMAN 

WAS    A   WELL-SPRING    OF   JOY    TO    HER   CHILDREN 

I   DEDICATE    THIS    BOOK 

IN    GRATEFUL    MEMORY 


314728 


PREFACE 

Since  the  appearance,  in  1902,  of  William  James's  book, 
"The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,"  many  persons 
have  delved  into  the  field  of  the  psychology  of  religious  ex- 
perience and  have  tried  to  find  an  interpretation  thereof. 
Since  the  field  is  inexhaustible,  each  seeker  hopes  that  he 
may  illuminate  afresh  its  problem  and  perhaps  discover 
therein  some  "Cosa  Nuova." 

The  method  which  this  study  follows  is  that  of  Professor 
James's  book,  but  the  material  used  is  for  the  most  part 
different  and  in  consequence  the  outcome  is  not  the  same. 
James  used  largely  autobiographical  material,  with  the  re- 
sult that  genuine  religion  seemed  to  him  principally  a  matter 
of  individual,  emotional  experience.  The  material  I  have 
taken  is  derived  chiefly  from  prayers,  hymns,  and  religious 
poetry,  with  the  outcome  that  religious  experience  appears 
to  me  to  be  a  social  as  well  as  an  individual  experience,  and 
quite  as  practical  as  emotional. 

This  material,  since  it  is  the  embodiment  of  the  religious 
faith  of  the  ages,  I  may  well  speak  of,  as  far  as  I  am  con- 
cerned, as  a  gift.  In  regard  to  the  historical  problems  which 
arise,  I  have  used  the  result  of  the  research  of  scholars, 
recognized  as  authorities  in  their  special  fields  —  such 
scholars  as  Robertson-Smith,  Frazer,  Harnack,  Pfleiderer, 
and  others. 

Although  I  have  tried  as  well  as  I  was  able  to  enter 
freshly  into  these  "varieties  of  religious  experience"  and 
to  interpret  them  accordingly,  yet  even  here  in  the  analysis 
and  interpretation  of  the  types  and  states  of  religious  ex- 
perience, many  teachers  have  taught  me,  both  by  their  books 
and  through  the  spoken  word.  To  all  these  teachers,  known 
and  unknown  by  me,  I  wish  here  in  a  general  way,  since  1 


Viii  PREFACE 

cannot  name  them  all,  to  make  acknowledgment.  More 
especially,  however,  I  would  record  my  thanks  to  those  pro- 
fessors in  the  Department  of  Philosophy  of  Harvard  Univer- 
sity, who  were  at  one  time  my  teachers  in  the  more  technical 
sense  of  the  word,  all  of  whom  helped  me  to  clearer  think- 
ing; and  particularly  I  would  make  acknowledgment  to 
Professor  Josiah  Royce,  without  whose  wise  counsel  and 
stimulating  suggestions,  this  book  could  hardly  have  been 
written.  What  I  owe  to  these  teachers  at  particular  points 
will  be  apparent  to  all  who  are  conversant  with  their  theories. 
To  work  with  such  teachers  is  a  very  great  privilege,  and  it 
has  seemed  to  me  that  I  should  try  to  pass  on  to  others,  in 
some  measure,  what  I  have  received  from  them. 

This  book  was  finished  (with  the  exception  of  a  few  minor 
changes  and  additions)  before  the  outbreak  of  the  European 
War.  In  those  days  (recent,  though  they  seem  to  us  now 
so  long  ago)  of  commercialism,  of  business  efficiency,  and 
the  successes  of  applied  science,  many  people  have  held  that 
religion  was  a  back  number.  To-day,  face  to  face  with  a 
world-crisis,  with  the  carnage  and  desolation  of  war  and  the 
threatened  submergence  of  every  outward  sign  of  our  civili- 
zation, men  are  crying  out  that  religion  is  a  failure. 

It  may  be  that  the  Day  of  the  Lord  is  at  hand,  when  all 
outward  symbols  of  the  present-day  civilization  are  about  to 
perish  and  not  a  wrack  be  left  behind ;  when  men  shall  cry 
on  every  side  :  "  Who  shall  show  us  any  good  ?  "  and  "  Peace, 
peace,  when  there  is  no  peace  I  " 

Bold,  imaginative  thinkers,  like  H.  G.  Wells,  for  example, 
believe  to  find  in  science  some  permanent  value,  and  some 
message  of  freedom,  peace,  and  hope  for  man's  troubled 
spirit.  Science,  like  ethics,  though  from  a  different  stand- 
point, believes  in  the  infinite  possibilities  of  man  and  in  the 
great  adventure  before  him  ;  and  science,  like  religion,  holds 
to  man's  relations  to  an  undiscovered  country, —  an  "un- 
seen world."  But  the  new  world  of  science  is  in  part  still 
a  world  man-made,  and  in  part  a  world  belonging  to  the  old 
natural  order,  and  inevitably  we  ask,  can  such  a  value,  which 
is  after  all  of  our  finite  world,  be  an  eternal  value  ? 


PREFACE  IX 

It  is  otherwise  with  the  new  world  which  religion  holds 
to.  The  new  world  of  religion  belongs  to  an  order  which 
we  may  call  a  transformed,  or  supernatural  order,  yet  this 
order,  as  we  shall  see,  is  still  in  close  touch  with  the  tem- 
poral order,  and  it  is,  I  believe,  an  order  which  is  completely 
rational.  It  is  not  religion  itself,  then,  which  is  a  failure, 
but  man's  own  thinking  about  it ;  and  his  own  attitude,  in 
that  he  does  not  practise  what  he  really  sees  and  experiences. 
The  present  war  may  serve  as  a  chastening  experience  to 
make  man  see  again  the  need  of  the  quickening  of  the  re- 
ligious spirit,  and  may  reveal  to  him  that  while  old  formulas, 
old  symbols  and  creeds  may  need  to  be  "re-phrased  to  the 
lights  and  perfections  of  a  new  dawn,"  in  religion  is  still  to 
be  found  man's  perennial,  healing  spring  of  strength  and 
hope  both  for  the  way  of  his  every-day  life,  and  in  the  great 
crises  of  the  individual  life,  as  well  as  in  the  life  of  nations. 
At  the  present  hour  many  persons  are  prophesying  that 
when  the  war  in  Europe  is  finally  over  there  vfiW  follow,  out 
of  man's  sense  of  his  own  weakness  and  his  great  need, 
a  revival  of  religion.  What  we  want  to  be  sure  of  is  —  and 
this  is  in  man's  power  —  that  this  religious  revival,  when  it 
comes,  shall  be  a  re-awakening  of  a  religious  spirit  that  is 
truly  spiritual^  that  is,  profoundly  ethical.  Man,  in  his 
sense  of  weakness  and  need,  is  so  prone  to  fly  to  some  magic- 
making  substitute  for  religion,  no  matter  how  irrational  it 
may  be.  A  spiritual  religion  requires  effort,  self-control, 
concentration,  reflection,  determination  of  the  will,  and  these 
men  are  not  ready  to  give.  If  it  seems  to  us  that  this  con- 
scious thirst  for  the  deep  springs  of  the  spiritual  life  is  that 
of  which  our  own  age  stands  most  in  need,  doubtless  this 
has  been  felt  to  be  the  fundamental  lack  in  every  age.  For 
man  is,  after  all,  so  little  spiritual.  He  has  as  yet  hardly 
broken  loose  from  nature.  He  is  like  a  statue  only  just 
emerging  from  the  rough  block.  His  wings  have  hardly 
begun  to  grow. 

In  my  interpretation  of  religious  experience  it  may  pos- 
sibly seem  to  some  of  my  readers  that  I  have  laid  too  great 
stress  on  the  "ministry  of  sorrow."     I  can  only  appeal  to 


X  PREFACE 

the  testimony  of  human  experience.  Sorrow  has  many 
forms,  but  in  one  form  or  another,  it  comes,  sooner  or  later, 
to  all.  Then,  if  the  soul  of  the  man  is  strong  enough  to 
meet  the  test  of  this  chastening  experience,  sorrow  becomes 
a  purifier  and  a  supreme  revealer  of  truth.  It  gives  a  new 
sense  of  brotherhood  and  impels  to  helpful  deeds  and  service. 
Nevertheless,  to  my  mind,  the  glad  quest  and  service  of 
man's  divine  ideal  and  the  blessed  vision  of  it,  are  expe- 
riences equally  fundamental,  and  equally  conducive  to  spirit- 
ual growth.  The  point  I  have  wished  to  make  is,  that 
neither  joy  nor  sorrow,  in  the  purely  natural  form  of  them, 
is  particularly  a  means  to  the  growth  of  the  spirit,  but  that 
these  natural  experiences  must  undergo  a  spiritual  trans- 
formation in  order  to  become  such. 

This  book,  whatever  its  failures  (and  no  one  knows  better 
than  I  how  many  they  are)  has  as  its  excuse  for  being  this 
—  that  it  is  an  effort  to  add,  what  one  may,  to  the  message 
of  those  masters  among  us  who  are  striving  to  bring  in  the 
life  of  the  spirit.  In  it  I  have  tried  to  avoid  language  which 
is  technical,  and  while  in  a  few  places  the  reasoning  is  rather 
close  and  demands  some  concentration  of  attention  (as  for 
example  in  the  discussion  of  the  freedom  of  the  will,  in 
Chapter  IV),  yet,  since  on  the  whole  the  work  is  so  little 
technical,  I  hope  that  it  may  appeal  to  the  general  reader 
who  is  interested  in  the  questions  with  which  religion  deals. 

This  book  is  offered,  then,  in  the  hope  that  it  may  help, 
if  ever  so  little,  to  clearer  thinking  upon  these  problems  of 
religion  and  philosophy,  and  to  the  wisdom  and  peace  of 
mind  which  may  be  born  from  such  thinking,  from  which 
shall  come  at  last  the  creation  of  that  soul  which  is  alike 
valiant  and  gentle,  steadfast  and  serene. 

ANNIE  LYMAN  SEARS. 


^  The  fiend  that  man  harries 
Is  love  of  the  Best; 
Yawns  the  pit  of  the  Dragon, 
Lit  by  rays  from  the  Blest, 
The  Lethe  of  Nature 
Can't  trance  him  again. 
Whose  soul  sees  the  perfect, 
Which  his  eyes  seek  in  vain  J  ^ 

—  R.  W.  Emerson. 


0  Son  of  Man,  to-night  my  lot 

Naught  hut  Thy  presence  can  avail; 

Yet  on  the  road  Thy  wheels  are  not. 
Nor  on  the  sea  Thy  sail ! 

My  how  or  when.  Thou  wilt  not  heed. 
But  come  down  Thine  own  secret  stair, 

That  Thou  mayst  answer  all  my  need  — 
Yea,  every  by-gone  prayer,'^ 

—  George  MacDonald. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 


PAOB 

The  Problem  of   Religious  Idealism  and  the  Answer  op 


Religious  Mysticism 


CHAPTER  II 

The  Universal  Elements  of  Religious  Experience      .        .      41 
Note  on  Sin  and  the  Consciousness  of  Sin     .        .        ,        .      65 

CHAPTER  in 

The  Way  of  Life  —  Its  Nature 83 

1.  Mystical  and  Ethical. 

2.  Individual  and  Social. 

CHAPTER  rV 

The  Way  of  Life  —  Its  Sources 123 

1.  Grace  and  Merit 124 

2.  (a)  Necessity  and  Freedom 141 

(5)   Original  Sin  and  Moral  Responsibility   ....  141 

(c)   Social  Authority  and  Individual  Judgment   .         .        .  168 

CHAPTER  IV   (Continued) 

3.  The  Inner  and  the  Outer 175 

CHAPTER  V 

The  Way  of  Life  —  Its  Forms    .        ...,,.    207 

1.   The  Temporal  and  the  Eternal 208 

ziii 


PAGE 


XIV  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER   V    (Continued) 

2.  The  Static  and  the  Dynamic 249 

Prayer  and  its  Office 262 

CHAPTER  V   (Continued) 

3.  The  Many  and  the  One 341 

CHAPTER  VI 
The  Indwelling  op  the  Spirit    .        .        .        .        .        .        .    413 

APPENDIX 477 


INTRODUCTORY  NOTE 

In  this  Introductory  Note  I  propose  not  an  exposition 
of  the  book  of  Miss  Sears,  which  will  speak  for  itself,  nor 
a  critical  discussion  of  its  method,  —  a  discussion  for 
which  there  is  here  no  adequate  space, — but  a  brief  in- 
dication, first,  of  what  I  find  most  interesting  and  original 
in  the  spirit  of  this  volume,  and  secondly,  of  the  place 
which  I  hope  that  it  will  take  in  the  minds  of  some  readers, 
as  it  has  also  taken  such  a  place  in  my  own  mind. 

I  have  been  privileged  to  follow,  during  a  number  of 
years,  the  growth  of  the  author's  study  and  thought 
regarding  the  problem  of  religion,  as  this  study  and 
thought  find  expression  in  the  present  volume.  It  is 
true  that  for  some  years,  in  connection  with  work  at 
Radcliffe  College,  and  as  member  of  one  of  my  own 
Seminaries  at  Harvard,  Miss  Sears  has  stood  in  the  rela- 
tion of  a  pupil  of  my  own.  When  a  teacher  writes  how- 
ever brief  an  introductory  statement  regarding  the  book 
of  a  pupil,  readers  are  likely  to  assume  that  the  book  has 
a  somewhat  close  relation  to  ideas  and  opinions  which  the 
teacher  has  conveyed  to  the  pupil.  The  very  fact  that 
such  an  Introductory  Note  was  written  tends,  therefore, 
in  the  minds  of  some  readers,  to  deprive  the  book  of  an 
opportunity  to  produce  its  own  fair  impression  as  a  piece 
of  independent  research,  and  as  an  expression  of  the 
author's  personal  interpretation  and  solution  of  the 
problems  studied.  The  reader  tends  to  regard  the  willing- 
ness of  the  teacher  to  commend  certain  features  of  the  book 
as  an  acknowledgment  of  some  sort  of  discipleship  on  the 
part  of  the  author,  and  consequently  as  a  reason  why  the 
book  should  not  be  treated  quite  as  considerately  as  if  it 

XV 


XVi  INTRODUCTORY  NOTE 

stood  solely  on  the  foundation  of  its  author^s  wholly 
individual  study  and  opiaion. 

So  far  as  possible  I  wish  to  say  that  such  a  judgment, 
if  passed  upon  the  book  of  Miss  Sears  on  the  basis  of  the 
fact  that  she  was  for  some  years,  and  in  a  limited  degree, 
under  the  influence  of  my  own  philosophical  teaching,  and 
has  worked  in  Seminaries  of  mine,  while  this  book  has  to  a 
considerable  extent  grown  up  under  the  influence  of  criti- 
cisms and  suggestions  of  my  own,  would  be  an  unjust 
judgment,  unless  in  passing  this  judgment  the  reader  were 
duly  to  acknowledge  the  actual  degree  of  independence, 
and  the  actual  originality  of  opinion,  of  idea,  and  of 
method  which  are  to  be  found  in  this  work. 

As  a  student  of  philosophy  I  have  had  frequent  occasion 
to  write  about  the  philosophy  of  religion,  and  about  various 
problems  of  the  religious  life.  The  book  of  Miss  Sears  is 
neither  an  exposition  of  philosophical  opinions  of  my  own, 
nor  does  it  deal  with  the  problems  of  religious  philosophy 
as  I  have  usually  dealt  with  them,  nor  is  its  method  one 
that  I  could  myself  apply,  nor  is  its  degree  of  discipleship 
such  as  deprives  it  of  a  very  important  independence. 
The  main  idea  of  Miss  Sears,  the  idea  expressed  in  the  title 
of  the  book,  the  idea  of  studying  '^The  Drama  of  the 
Spiritual  Life,^^  and  the  idea  of  the  particular  way  in 
which  this  book  studies  that  drama,  —  these  are  features 
which  Miss  Sears  has  made  thoroughly  her  own,  and 
which  are  due  to  the  results  of  any  teaching  of  mine  only 
in  the  sense  that  after  Miss  Sears  had  herself  thought  of 
this  mode  of  treating  the  topic  of  the  present  work,  I 
approved  her  plan,  watched  from  time  to  time  the  way 
in  which  she  gave  it  expression,  suggested  modes  by  which 
she  could  collect  material,  and  sometimes  made  com- 
ments upon  the  way  in  which  the  material  had  been 
collected,  and  in  which  it  is,  in  the  course  of  the  present 
volume,  used.  The  metaphysical  views  which  frequently 
appear  in  the  background  of  Miss  Sears 's  inquiry  are 
much  less  expressive  of  any  metaphysical  doctrine  of  my 


INTRODUCTORY   NOTE  Xvii 

own  than  they  are  independent  queries  of  hers  regarding 
whether  or  no  such  metaphysical  ideas  of  hers  as  have 
been  influenced  by  me  can  be  rightfully  used  as  a  basis 
for  the  interpretation  of  religion.  Not  so  much  the  pupil, 
as  the  critic,  of  my  own  special  metaphysical  theses,  speaks 
in  these  pages.  And  the  criticisms  impUed  are  distinctly 
such  that  if  I  were  again  writing  upon  the  problems  with 
which  Miss  Sears  here  deals,  I  should  have  to  modify  my 
own  expressions  of  opinion,  and  in  certain  respects,  my 
own  opinions,  in  order  to  be  just  to  what  she  has  presented. 

Thus,  however  near  at  some  points  the  interpretation 
of  religion  which  Miss  Sears  uses  approaches  interpreta- 
tions which  she  has  heard  in  lectures  or  in  Seminaries  of 
my  own,  she  is  nowhere  writing  either  as  expounder,  or  as 
mere  disciple,  of  any  philosophy  of  religion  which  I  have 
maintained  or  shall  maintain.  The  book  is  an  expres- 
sion, first,  of  its  author's  personal  experience  in  religious 
matters,  and  secondly,  of  the  results  of  her  own  decidedly 
wide  reading  of  the  literature  wherein  certain  types  of 
religious  experience  have  received  their  expression.  The 
range  of  this  reading  is  the  author's  own,  the  choice  of  the 
documents  of  religious  experience  which  she  has  used  has 
been,  in  most  cases,  also  largely  her  own.  I  have  not 
suggested,  in  the  majority  of  cases,  either  the  documents 
read  or  the  special  reflections  which  they  have  suggested 
to  Miss  Sears,  although  I  have  very  naturally  given, 
from  time  to  time,  advice  concerning  the  carrying  on  of 
her  research,  and  the  interest  of  the  results  which  she  has 
reached. 

Characteristically  and  especially  due  to  the  author  of 
this  book  is  the  feature  emphasized  in  the  title,  and 
almost  everywhere,  both  in  the  choice  and  in  the  treat- 
ment of  the  documents  used  in  her  text.  I  know  of  no 
other  effort  to  deal  with  the  problem  of  the  estimate  and 
the  guidance  of  religious  experience  which  anywhere 
nearly  furnishes  what  is  thus  most  characteristic  of  the 
present  volume.    As  a  reader  of  the  documents  of  the 


Xviii  INTRODUCTORY   NOTE 

religious  life,  Miss  Sears  is  very  notably  guided  by  what 
William  James  loved  to  call  'Hhe  dramatic  temperament," 
and  by  its  interests.  James  said  that  the  true  pragmatists 
are  especially  characterized  by  this  predominance  in 
their  minds  of  ''the  dramatic  temper.".  I  do  not  believe 
that  Miss  Sears  would  call  herself  a  pragmatist,  although 
I  leave  the  judgment  of  that  matter  to  the  reader  of  this 
book.  But  I  am  sure  that  this  work  shows  throughout  the 
''dramatic  temper,"  estimates  both  religious  experience 
and  its  documents  in  terms  of  such  a  temper,  is  singularly 
free  from  any  such  "barren  intellectualism "  as  James 
abhorred,  and  has  not  derived  these  notable  features  either 
in  its  methods  or  in  its  materials,  from  any  agreement 
with  metaphysical  opinions  of  my  own,  or  from  the  fact 
that  the  author  has  listened  to  lectures  of  mine,  or  has 
attended  Seminaries  of  which  I  was  a  leader. 

Of  course  it  might  be  easy  to  say  that  the  author's  mode 
of  treating  religious  problems  shows  some  signs  of  the 
so-called  "dialectical  method,"  since  certain  antitheses 
and  paradoxes  of  the  religious  consciousness  and  of  its 
experience  are  emphasized,  while  various  attempts  are 
made  to  solve,  or  at  least  to  clarify,  these  paradoxes. 
Such  use  of  the  "dialectical  method"  might  be  referred 
by  some  readers  to  philosophical  tendencies  which  Miss 
Sears  has  acquired  from  the  sort  of  philosophy  which 
she  has  studied,  more  or  less,  under  my  influence.  But 
a  fair  study  of  the  text  of  this  volume  will  show  how  far 
Miss  Sears's  treatment  of  the  paradoxes  and  problems  of 
religious  experience  which  are  here  in  question  is  from 
being  a  mere  catalogue  of  possible  philosophical  opinions, 
or  a  mere  study  of  their  dialectics.  Experience  and  life, 
in  precisely  these  their  most  paradoxical  phases,  form  her 
problem,  furnish  her  topics,  get  expressed  in  the  conflicts 
of  opinion  to  which  she  makes  reference,  and  give  the  back- 
ground and  the  basis  for  so  much  of  the  dialectical  pro- 
cedure as  plays  its  part  in  this  volume.  But  it  is  not  as 
dialectics,  but  as  life  and  as  experience  that  the  rehgious 


INTRODUCTORY   NOTE  XIX 

problems  with  which  Miss  Sears  has  to  do  present  them- 
selves, and  pass  through  their  various  phases.  No  reader 
of  Miss  Sears's  third  chapter,  on  '^The  Way  of  Life,  Its 
Nature, '^  and  of  the  manifold  and  various  illustrations 
which  appear  in  that  chapter,  can  regard  her  interpretation 
of  the  '^ Drama  of  the  Spiritual  Life"  as  the  mere  summary 
of  any  philosophical  opinion,  or  as  the  product  of  any 
merely  intellectual  dialectics,  or  of  the  influence  of  any 
one  philosophy  or  philosopher.  If  the  material  of  religious 
experience  of  which  the  author  makes  use  is  in  this,  and  in 
many  other  chapters,  the  result  of  collection  and  of  obser- 
vation, the  method  of  collection  is  new,  the  observations 
are  everywhere  colored  by  personal  experience,  the 
oppositions  considered  and  estimated  are  stated  in  terms 
of  no  merely  abstract  dialectic,  but  in  terms  of  what  the 
poets  and  the  prophets,  and  in  general  the  leaders  and 
guides  of  the  human  race,  have  noted  and  have  recorded. 
The  way  in  which  these  records  are  used  is  not  due  to  the 
acceptance  of  the  opinions  of  any  philosopher,  and  is 
everywhere  characterized  by  an  independence,  both  in 
the  choice  and  in  the  treatment  of  the  text,  an  indepen- 
dence which  I  can  only  urge  the  reader  of  this  book  to 
recognize  from  the  first,  and  to  view  with  high  hope,  and 
with  keen  interest.  The  reader  of  this  book  will  find 
novelties  in  plenty.  That  the  author  has  studied  the 
philosophy  of  religion,  he  will  recognize,  but  he  will 
readily  see  that  no  philosopher  is  responsible  either  for 
her  mode  of  treating  the  subject  or  for  the  results  which 
she  obtains.  She  is  neither  sceptic,  nor  uncritical  disciple 
of  anybody,  nor  the  adherent  of  any  one  dogmatically 
asserted  religious  or  philosophical  creed.  The  process  of 
the  religious  life  she  regards  as  an  empirical  fact  whose 
importance  is  to  be  tested  by  experience.  The  tests  of 
the  values  of  religious  experience,  and  her  hypotheses 
with  regard  to  its  meaning,  are  neither  those  of  Professor 
Leuba,  nor  those  which  William  Jameses  ^^  Varieties  of 
Religious  Experience"  rendered  for  a  while  so  fascinating. 


XX  INTRODUCTORY   NOTE 

She  does  not  present  a  formal  psychology  of  reUgion,  such 
as  one  finds  in  the  book  of  Professor  Leuba,  nor  is  this 
volume  a  treatise  on  the  history  of  reUgion,  nor  yet  on 
what  is  technically  called  ''the  phenomenology  of  reUgion." 
She  does  not,  like  more  than  one  recent  religious  psy- 
chologist, depend  upon  a  collection  of  materials  furnished 
by  individual  correspondents,  and  obtained  by  means  of 
questionaires,  or  similar  devices.  Nor  does  Miss  Sears 
attempt  to  use  in  a  systematic  way  the  scholarly  results 
of  such  investigators  of  the  history  of  religion  as  Professor 
G.  F.  Moore,  and  Professor  Toy.  She  does  not  trespass 
upon  the  field  of  the  OrientaUst,  of  the  classical  philologist, 
or  any  other  specialist.  Her  materials  come  to  her  from 
sources  which  I  should  not  have  expected  to  find  so  fruit- 
ful, had  not  her  own  patience  and  ingenuity  shown  how 
valuable  they  can  be,  and  in  her  volume  are. 

William  James  sought  his  materials  for  religious  psy- 
chology in  the  personal  records  of  extraordinary  religious 
geniuses.  The  philologist  and  the  phenomenologists  of 
religion  have  found  their  own  materials  in  the  sacred 
documents,  and  in  the  customs  and  ceremonies  and  social 
organization  of  the  various  recorded  faiths,  as  well  as  in 
the  ritual  and  in  the  practices  of  different  churches,  sects, 
and  other  organized  religious  bodies.  Miss  Sears  can 
use,  and  does  use,  fragments  of  such  material  whenever 
she  needs  them,  so  that  very  various  sources  furnish  for 
her  inspection  incidents,  and  scenes,  from  the  ''Drama 
of  the  Spiritual  Life." 

But  her  interests  in  such  materials,  her  mode  of  col- 
lecting them,  and  her  arrangement  of  them  are  in  many 
respects  unique,  and  serve  to  distinguish  her  treatise  no 
less  from  the  histories  of  religion,  from  the  psychologies 
of  religion,  from  the  " phenomenologies  of  religion"  which 
are  now  so  numerous,  than  from  the  philosophies  of  reli- 
gion which  are  due  to  the  systematic  effort  to  interpret 
religion  in  the  light  of  this  or  of  that  metaphysical  opinion. 

Miss  Sears  uses,  namely,  and  uses  very  variously  and 


INTRODUCTORY   NOTE  XXI 

skilfully,  materials  that  are  found  in  poetry,  in  religious 
scriptures,  in  general  literature,  sometimes  in  current 
literature,  very  frequently  in  authors  of  classic  rank,  and 
also  very  frequently  in  less  widely  known  books,  docu- 
ments, and  writers.  Such  materials  are  indeed  accessible 
to  all.  What  is  unique  in  this  treatise  is  the  way  in  which 
the  materials  are  selected,  rearranged,  and  massed. 
Unique  also  is  the  way  in  which  the  materials  are  em- 
ployed to  illustrate  the  nature  and  the  meaning  of  the 
religious  life.  We  have  a  good  many  recent  books  which 
are  devoted  to  depicting  the  lives,  the  doctrine,  and  the 
influence  of  representatives  of  some  one  type  of  religion. 
Thus,  in  particular,  the  Mystics  have  for  various  reasons 
been  treated  with  great  care  and  in  great  detail  in  well- 
known  recent  discussions  of  the  religious  life,  as  for  in- 
stance in  the  two  well-known  works  of  Evelyn  Underhill. 
Miss  Sears  has  taken  a  very  reasonable  and  appreciative 
notice,  both  of  the  Mystics  and  of  their  contribution  to 
religion.  But  for  her  the  Mystics  are  only  some  of  those 
who  take  part  in  the  *' Drama  of  the  Spiritual  Life.'' 
She  neither  opposes  them,  nor  is  she  at  their  mercy.  In 
her  choice  of  the  writers  to  furnish  illustrations  for  her 
drama  contemporary  poets  and  critics,  as  well  as  the 
prayers,  hymns,  and  poems  of  the  most  various  ages  and 
religions,  Walter  Pater,  and  Fitzgerald's  Omar  Khayyam, 
Professor  Carver,  and  PhiUips  Brooks,  Marcus  Aurelius, 
and  the  Buddhist  scriptures,  Seneca,  and  Tolstoy,  George 
Meredith,  and  Bunyan,  the  Song  of  Deborah,  Homer,  and 
Tennyson,  as  well  as  St.  Augustine,  the  Psalms,  the 
Apostle  Paul,  are  used  with  the  greatest  catholicity  and 
breadth  of  interest.  Yet  this  widely  various  material 
is  so  ingeniously  massed  and  so  interpreted  in  terms  of 
the  leading  ideas  in  whose  illustrations  the  ^' Drama  of 
the  Spiritual  Life"  consists,  that  the  book  nowhere  pro- 
duces the  impression  of  the  miscellaneous. 

James's  '^Varieties  of  Religious  Experience"  made  use 
of  very  various  illustrations,  and  was  characterized  both 


XXll  INTRODUCTORY   NOTE 

by  a  tolerant  and  catholic  spirit,  and  by  a  great  breadth 
of  sympathy.  But  James,  after  all,  sympathized  most 
with  eccentric  beings,  with  geniuses  who  were  more  or 
less  abnormal,  with  saints  who  were,  at  their  best,  con- 
verted ^'cranks."  On  the  other  hand,  the  tolerance  of 
Miss  Sears  is  especially  attracted  by  the  persons,  the 
religious  documents,  the  inspirations  which  illustrate 
the  main  ideas  of  her  drama,  —  ideas  which  can  best  be 
surveyed  by  considering  the  titles  of  her  various  chapters, 
and  the  passages  of  her  book  which  contain  definite  sum- 
maries of  problems  and  results.  If  the  reader  will  first 
become  acquainted  with  the  opening  chapter  of  the  book, 
and  with  some  of  the  summary  passages  in  question,  he 
will  hereby  be  provided  with  the  key  to  the  author's 
method  of  selecting  and  massing  her  material.  Then  he 
will  see,  that  despite  the  familiarity  of  the  main  issues 
here  discussed,  and  despite  the  very  large  space  devoted 
to  citations,  to  quotations,  and  to  what  at  first  sight 
appears  to  be  unoriginal  about  the  work,  the  whole  is  full 
of  a  decidedly  unique  treatment  of  familiar,  but  essentially 
always  novel,  problems.  If  in  addition  to  this  preparation 
for  reading  this  volume,  the  reader  also  takes  account  of 
the  author's  independence  and  sympathetically  critical 
attitude  towards  all  doctrines  and  dogmas  of  a  meta- 
physical nature,  whether  they  be  due  to  tradition  or  to 
philosophy,  the  work  will  tend  to  become  to  anyone  who 
has  once  come  to  understand  its  spirit  and  its  method, 
a  kindly,  a  sustaining,  and  an  enlightening  companion. 
As  a  fact,  the  book  is  neither  an  anthology  nor  a  syste- 
matic history  or  philosophy  of  religion.  It  is  the  por- 
trayal of  a  process  which  is  at  once  universally  human, 
and  of  intense  interest  to  every  really  awakened  individual, 
deeply  dramatic  in  its  significance,  and  capable  of  being 
understood  all  the  better  through  a  reading  of  the  exposi- 
tion which  it  here  receives,  whether  the  reader,  in  Lord 
Gifford's  often  quoted  words,  used  in  his  bequest  which 
founded  the  Gifford  lectureships  at  the  Scottish  univer- 


INTRODUCTORY   NOTE  XXIU 

sities,  '^Be  of  any  religion  or  whether  he  be,  as  men  say, 
of  no  religion/^  In  brief,  anybody  who  reads  this  book 
and  makes  it  his  companion,  will,  in  my  opinion,  make 
better  use  of  his  own  faith,  understand  better  its  meaning, 
appreciate  more  deeply  its  problems,  be  less  perplexed 
by  its  paradoxes,  and  better  prepared,  both  to  give 
reasons  for  the  faith  that  is  in  him,  if  he  has  any  faith,  and 
more  intelligently  adapted  for  the  tolerance,  the  critically 
reverent,  and  the  positively  constructive  examination  of 
the  meaning  of  the  '^  Drama  of  the  Spiritual  Life." 

Since  I  am  sure  that  these  excellences  of  the  present 
work  are  due  to  its  author's  skill,  ingenuity,  and  devotion, 
and  not  to  any  accidental  instructions  which  happen  to 
have  occurred  in  technical  lectures  or  in  Seminary  con- 
ferences in  which  I  myself  had  part,  I  feel  that,  in  urging 
the  reader  to  take  this  book  as  it  is  intended  to  be  taken, 
and  to  learn  from  it  what  its  author  intends  to  have 
learned,  I  am  not  merely  speaking  as  a  teacher,  some  of 
whose  views  have  indeed  influenced  the  author's  inquiry. 
Nor  am  I  speaking  in  the  interests  of  any  technical 
religious  philosophy  or  psychology.  Nor  yet  am  I  mak- 
ing light  of  the  great  work  which  technical  scholar- 
ship has  done  and  is  doing  for  the  history,  or  the 
psychology,  and  for  the  philosophy  of  religion.  I  write 
as  I  do  because  of  the  deep,  and,  as  I  hope,  wise  influence 
which  a  due  acquaintance  with  the  author's  careful 
collections  and  admirable  massing  of  her  material  ought 
to  have,  not  merely  as  an  exposition  of  the  ''Drama  of 
the  Spiritual  Life,"  but  as  an  influence  which  will  add, 
at  the  present  crisis,  new  ways  of  acting,  and,  as  I  hope, 
new  deeds  to  that  drama.  In  her  Preface  the  author  has 
wisely  spoken  of  the  relation  of  her  book  to  the  situation 
and  to  the  needs  of  civilization  at  the  present  moment, 
when  all  that  is  dear  in  and  for  the  spiritual  life  of  human- 
ity is  threatened,  and  is  in  need  of  defence,  and  of  some 
inspiring  and  reawakening  influence.  At  such  a  moment 
a  treatise  on  the  philosophy  of  religion  might  well  have 


XXIV  INTRODUCTORY   NOTE 

the  fortune  to  be  overlooked  altogether.  But  a  volume 
like  the  present  one,  which  deals  with  our  greatest  prob- 
lems by  means  of  so  tolerant  and  kindly  an  exposition, 
which  uses  such  keenly  critical  and  yet  such  sympathetic 
methods  of  reviewing  what  mankind  has  done  towards 
winning  the  goal  of  the  ''Drama  of  the  Spiritual  Life,'' 
ought  not  to  be  neglected.  It  of  course  cannot  be  judged 
as  a  technical  treatise  on  the  history  of  religion,  or  on  the 
problems  of  the  psychology  or  philosophy  of  religion. 
It  is  a  statement  of  the  great  needs  and  issues  of  life,  — 
a  statement  wherein  the  voices  of  many  of  the  good  and 
wise,  both  of  former  times  and  of  our  own  times,  are  so 
brought  together,  that  every  one  who  makes  this  book  his 
companion  should  be  better  prepared  to  endure  the 
tragedies,  and  to  read  the  lesson  of  that  ''great  and 
terrible  day  of  the  Lord,"  through  which,  as  many  of  the 
ancient  prophets  would  be  telling  us,  were  they  now  with 
us,  humanity,  if  viewed  in  the  light  of  the  "Drama  of 
the  Spiritual  Life,"  now  seems  (if  we  may  use  the  old 
and  well-worn  figure),  to  be  passing. 

I  heartily  commend  this  book,  then,  both  to  those  who 
will  find  its  author's  analysis  of  religious  ideas  and  experi- 
ences attractive,  as  I  hope  that  many  will  do,  and  to 
those  who  are  willing  frequently  to  ponder,  and  watch- 
fully to  read  and  reread  the  illustrations  of  religious 
experience  which  our  author  has  collected  from  so  many 
sources,  has  chosen  for  such  good  reasons,  and  has  massed 
and  arranged  so  skilfully,  in  such  wise  that  the  ideas 
in  terms  of  which  she  depicts  the  "Drama  of  the  Spiritual 
Life,"  are  so  well  lighted  up  by  the  reports  of  experience 
that  render  them  so  vital  and  so  concrete  to  every  justly 
attentive  reader. 

JOSIAH  ROYCE 

Cambridge,  Massachusetts 
Memorial  Day,  1915 


"And  her  desires  are  those 
For  happiness,  for  lastingness,  for  light ; 
'Tis  she  who  kindles  in  his  haunting  night 
The  hoped  dawn-rose." 

"Fair  fountains  of  the  dark 
Daily  she  waves  him,  that  his  inner  dream 
May  clasp  amid  the  glooms  a  springing  beam, 
A  quivering  lark." 

— George  Meredith. 


'As  one  seeing  the  invisible." 

— Hebrews. 


THE  DEAMA  OF  THE  SPIEITUAL  LIFE 


CHAPTER  I 

The  Problem  of  Religious  Idealism  and  the  Answer 
OF  Religious  Mysticism 

Out  of  the  far-away  and  hazy  past  from  which  religion 
comes  to  us,  it  is  a  difficult  task  to  disentangle  the  threads 
which  lead  to  religion's  source.  Doubtless  a  number 
of  psychological  motives  have  contributed  their  various 
influences,  but  I  wonder,  should  we  follow  that  path 
which  leads  to  the  most  distinguishing  characteristic  of 
man,  should  we  not  at  the  same  time  discover  the  foun- 
tain head  of  religion  ? 

What  is  that  quality  which  especially  marks  the  dis- 
tinction between  man  and  the  lower  animals  to  whom  in 
so  many  ways  he  is  closely  allied?  I  find  this  essential 
distinction  in  man's  power  to  form  ideals.  The  animal 
lives  in  and  for  the  moment.  He  has,  properly  speaking, 
no  religious  experience.  The  poet,  watching  the  skylark 
soaring  and  singing  far  up  in  the  heavens,  felt  that  man 
could  never  attain  to  the  bird's  ''clear,  keen  joyance," 
for,  as  for  man, 

"He  looks  before  and  after 
And  pines  for  what  is  not." 

Without  this  characteristic  attitude,  man  would  not  be 
man.  He  is  forever  a  dreamer,  a  creator  of  ideals.  It  is 
ideals  which  inspire  his  conduct.  He  seeks  for  them 
through  all  his  days.  He  gives  his  life  to  the  search  for 
them,  or  to  the  service  of  them  when  found.  This 
attitude  and  this  motive  appear  again  and  again  in  those 
records  of  primitive  man  and  of  the  childhood  of  the 


2        '^  ^' the'draSia.Pf  the  spiritual  life 

-A  ^  >  -^  ^".^  •»••:,    . 
race  ^-^" in -folk  lore,  fairy -tale,  and  myth.     To  be  sure,  even 

the  flower  turns  to  the  sunlight  and  the  amoeba  stretches 

out    its    tentacles    towards    the    agreeable    stimulation. 

But  we  do  not  hold  that  the  plant  or  the  amoeba  are 

governed  by  ideals,^  for  their  movements  are  impelled 

by  something  actually  present  to  sense,  hence  we  speak  of 

these  reactions  as  chemical  or  mechanical.   But  man  creates 

for  himself  an  unseen  and  a  so-far-unrealized  world. 

The  first  or  underlying  thesis  of  this  essay,  then  — 
the  fact  that  it  undertakes  to  establish  —  is  the  funda- 
mental ideality  of  religion;  and  the  ground  of  this  fact 
I  find  in  the  essential  nature  of  man.  Man  is  a  creator 
of  ideals.  He  lives,  therefore,  in  part  in  an  unseen  world. 
This  fact  makes  for  him  at  once  the  tragedy  and  the  joy 
of  existence. 

It  is  usually  said  that  man's  sense  of  need  is  the  source 
of  his  religious  experience.  Out  of  his  vague  longings, 
his  sense  of  Umitation  and  lack,  he  builds  a  better  world. 
Religion,  it  is  often  said,  is  essentially  the  comforter. 
Certainly  this  is  in  a  measure  true.  From  the  outset, 
man  is  a  creature  of  needs,  and,  especially  in  the  higher 
religions,  the  sense  of  inner  sin  has  played  a  prominent 
part  in  the  rehgious  life.  Yet,  we  may  ask,  would  man 
know  his  state  as  an  evil  one  which  he  might  either  escape 
from  or  overcome,  —  that  is,  as  something  which  ought 
not  to  be,  —  had  he  not  already  the  vision  of  a  better  or  a 
higher  state?  The  vision  and  the  need,  it  may  be  said, 
arise  together.  The  true  sinner  is  not  to  be  found  amongst 
the  lowest  representatives  of  society. 

"That  which  I  strove  to  be 
And  was  not  —  comforts  me." 

wrote    Browning,  —  for    I    hardly    recognize    my    need 
beyond  the  mere  sensation  of  discomfort,  unless  I  already 

^  That  is,  self-conscious  ends.  From  a  metaphysical  point  of  view 
we  should  perhaps  say  that  all  conscious  life  strives  for  something 
beyond  itself  —  that  the  lowly  animal  form,  for  example,  blindly 
strives  to  fulfil  its  type. 


THE    PROBLEM   OF   RELIGIOUS   IDEALISM  6 

see  beyond  my  need  to  some  possible  or  expected  good. 
Religion  comforts  and  helps  man  in  his  need  —  this  the 
prayers  and  hymns  and  the  other  records  of  religious 
experience  throughout  the  ages  abundantly  testify. 
Yet  religion  itself  comes  rather  as  a  joyful  thing.  It 
comes  to  man  in  his  sorrow  and  necessity,  to  be  sure, 
but  it  comes  borne  on  the  wings  of  inspiration,  glad- 
ness, and  hope;  it  comes  with  Hfe-giving,  with  trans- 
forming power,  and  it  comes  because,  in  a  sense,  the 
vision  was  already  there.  Man  creates  his  ideal  world, 
but  he  creates  it  because  he  already  has  it.  This 
is  the  perplexing  psychological  paradox  of  the  re- 
ligious—  shall  we  perhaps  say  of  the  human  —  con- 
sciousness. 

That  man's  need  is  not  the  sole  nor  perhaps  the  most 
fundamental  motive  to  the  creation  of  an  unseen  world 
appears,  I  think,  in  another  way.  The  creation  of  the 
ideal  world  is  due  in  part  to  an  impulse,  or  creative  in- 
stinct, like  the  creative  imagination  of  the  artist.  Con- 
sider, for  instance,  the  child's  world.  In  the  little  child, 
imagination  has  not  been  dulled  by  prosaic,  everyday  life. 
How  easily  the  child  creates  an  unseen  fairyland.  He  is 
not  only  the  Fairy  Prince,  the  Giant-Killer,  the  Little 
Sand-Man,  the  street  LampUghter,  but  also  the  cater- 
pillar, the  butterfly,  the  ''Old  Gray  Cat,"  ''Jack  Frost,'' 
"The  Little  New  Year."  And  as  he  transforms  himself 
through  his  keen  imagination,  so  he  transforms  and  re- 
builds his  world.  As  he  watches  the  dying  embers  in  the 
grate,  he  fancies  a  world  of  other  lives  and  happenings 
different  from  his  own.  As  he  paddles  his  boat  on  the 
stream  which  runs  through  the  meadow  near  his  house, 
he  fancies  himself  on  a  magic  voyage  on  an  enchanted 
river,  and  across  the  hills  which  bound  his  horizon  he  im- 
agines a  world  of  wonder  and  of  promise  where  enchanting 
dreams  come  true.  The  poets,  Wordsworth,  Stevenson, 
Blake,  tell  us  of  the  child  universal  —  the  child  striving 
to  make  real  — 


4  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

"Some  fragment  of  his  dream  of  human  life." 

"I  can  in  the  sorrel  sit 

Where  the  ladybird  alit. 
I  can  climb  the  jointed  grass ; 

And  on  high 
See  the  great  swallows  pass 

In  the  sky. 
And  the  romid  sun  rolling  by, 
Heeding  no  such  things  as  I." 

Children  love  fairy  tales  and  myths  which  have  for  their 
motive  the  search  involving  the  elements  of  adventure,  of 
danger,  and  the  overcoming  of  difficulties,  for  some  great 
prize  worth  a  life's  devotion  —  for  example,  the  search 
to  discover  the  enchanted  castle,  the  fairy  princess,  the 
Golden  Fleece,  the  Dark  Tower. 

We  find  this  motive  repeated  in  the  poet's  search  for 
the  blue  flower ;  in  the  search  for  the  philosopher's  stone 
or  the  elixir  of  life ;  and  in  the  quest  for  the  Holy  Grail. 
This  spirit,  too,  animates  the  Crusades.  Some  men  and 
women  have  always  in  their  hearts  the  fountain  of  per- 
petual youth ;  their  own  real  world  is  an  enchanted  land 
full  of  mystery,  —  in  its  heart  dwells  a  hidden  glory,  and 
every  person  they  meet  is  to  them  more  or  less  an  in- 
carnation of  the  divine.  But  these  men  are  near  akin  to 
the  religious-minded,  —  '^They  invest  the  world  with  its 
own  divinity." 

This  universal,  idealizing  tendency  appears  again  in 
that  realm  which  seems  furthest  removed  from  the  world 
of  the  child,  of  the  romancer,  and  of  the  poet.  Namely, 
in  that  world  which  is  called  essentially  the  world  of 
knowledge  and  of  hard  cold  facts  —  for  science,  too,  has 
its  fairy-land,  its  unseen  world  of  the  creative  imagination, 
its  ideals  which  it  strives  to  realize,  its  startling  hypotheses, 
its  thrilling  tales  of  discoveries  which  are  like  adventures 
in  fairy-land.  Take,  for  example,  the  following  prophecies 
of  the  future :  — 

"  Take  that  one  per  cent  of  argon  in  the  atmosphere  and  its  wonderful 
promise.     'The  man  who  first  combines  argon  into  a  compound/  says 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  RELIGIOUS   IDEALISM  5 

Prof.  R.  K.  Duncan,  'so  that  it  may  pass  by  metathesis  through  a  series 
of  combinations,  is  likely  to  have  accomplished  the  feat  of  having 
turned  topsy-turvy  the  elements  of  our  civilization/  Then  there  is 
the  prediction  about  the  energies  which  are  one  day  to  be  extracted 
from  matter.  They  reach  us  slowly  now,  but  Sir  William  Ramsay 
suggests  that  if  we  could  rush  the  process  by  using  an  appropriate 
'catalyzer'  the  'whole  future  of  our  race  would  be  altered/  But  this 
is  indej&nite.  Hear  Nikola  Tesla.  He  claims  that  'the  day  is  not 
distant  when  the  very  planet  which  gave  man  birth  will  tremble 
at  the  sound  of  his  voice/  Man  is  to  'draw  the  mighty  ocean  from  its 
bed,  transport  it  through  the  air,  and  create  lakes  and  rivers  at  will ; 
he  will  command  the  wild  elements ;  he  will  push  on  and  on  from  great 
to  greater  deeds,  until,  with  his  intelligence  and  force,  he  will  reach 
out  to  spheres  beyond  the  terrestrial/  And  then,  adding  shudders  to 
the  thrills,  Prof.  E.  Rutherford  announces  the  possibility  'of  devising 
a  detonator  which  could  send  a  wave  of  atomic  disintegration  through 
the  earth  and  decompose  the  whole  round  world  into  helium,  argon,  and 
other  gases,  leaving  literally  not  one  stone  upon  another/  "  ^ 

Like  childhood  and  youth,  like  the  poets  and  speculative 
scientists,  religious  experience  either  builds  for  itself  a 
better  and  a  brighter,  an  unseen  or  ideal  world,  or  it  trans- 
forms, through  its  vision  of  the  divine,  its  actual  world 
and  everyday  life  into  a  Beulah  Land  of  peace,  harmony, 
and  love  —  into  a  heavenly  and  abiding  city,  the  city 
of  God  on  earth.  Some  of  these  Utopian  dreams  of  re- 
ligious experience  we  shall  consider  more  fully  in  a  later 
chapter. 

In  the  earliest  records  of  religious  experience  which  have 
been  preserved  to  us  —  in  the  Pyramid  Texts  of  Ancient 
Egypt  —  is  portrayed  the  view  of  the  early  Egyptians  of  a 
beyond  world.  How  closely  akin  is  this  ^^  first  celestial 
hereafter''  to  the  fairy-land  of  childhood!  The  gods 
dwell  in  the  sky  and  thither,  after  death,  the  king  goes 
to  live  the  life  of  the  gods.  The  Utterances  of  the  Texts 
are  magic  charms  to  secure  his  safety  on  his  journey  as 
in  a  ferry  he  must  cross  the  Lily  Lake ;  or,  as  he  flies 
on  the  wings  of  a  falcon,  or  moimts  the  ladder  made 
for  his  ascent  by  the  oblique  rays  of    the  sun  to  the 

1  Boston  Herald,  June,  1912. 


6  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

wonderland  beyond  with  its  strange  inhabitants  and  its 
new  perils.^ 

Man,  too,  is  a  child  universal.  This  is  our  outcome  so 
far.  He,  too,  like  the  child  has  a  vision  of  the  unseen, 
and  an  unconquerable  faith  in  a  better  country,  even  an 
heavenly.  The  idea  of  God  is  an  idea  which  belongs  to 
this  unseen  and  supernatural  realm.  Primitive  man  wor- 
shipped the  Great  Unseen  Spirit  —  for  the  stock,  the  stone, 
the  idol,  is  hardly  itself  his  God.  The  Spirit  dwelleth  in 
these  symbols.  The  child's  earliest  idea  of  God  is  of  an 
unseen  being,  even  though  this  being  may  somewhat  re- 
semble his  own  father  or  mother.  To  youth  —  especially, 
perhaps,  to  lonely  and  independent  youth  —  the  thought 
of  God  has  a  twofold  development  and  significance.  He 
is  the  unseen  ideal  which  fills  all  life  with  wonder  and 
beauty,  but  this  ideal  is  embodied.  God  is  especially  the 
Great  Unseen  Companion,  Inspirer,  Sustainer,  Sympa- 
thizer. On  the  other  hand,  God  is  *'One  Who  Knows," 
the  Judge  —  one  whose  insight  is  true  and  complete.  He 
supports  the  lonely  soul  of  youth  in  his  attitude  of 

"  Mens  sibi  conscia  recti." 
We  shall  see  more  fully,  later  on,  how  the  concept  of  God 
becomes  moralized  and  spiritualized  into  the  Absolute 
Self  —  the  true  self  of  you  and  me  and  of  all  of  us  —  one's 
'^public"  selfhood,  yet  in  intimate  communion  with  one's 
inmost  individuality. 

While  it  is  a  fact,  I  believe,  that  the  ideality  of  man  is 
the  essential  source  of  religious  experience,  the  various 
other  motives  have  played  their  part  in  the  development 
of  this  experience.  For  instance,  it  has  often  been  said 
that  fear  first  created  the  gods.  When  one  considers  the 
widespread  belief  of  primitive  peoples  in  demons  and 
Jinni,  and  the  universality  among  savages  of  the  practice 
of  sympathetic  magic,  considerable  warrant  seems  to  be 
given  to  this  opinion. 

^See  J.  H.  Breasted,  ^'Religion  and  Thought  in  Ancient  Egypt," 
Lectures  III  and  IV. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  RELIGIOUS   IDEALISM  7 

Primitive  man  lived  his  daily  life  in  an  environment 
very  different  from  our  own.  When  his  whole  world  was 
embedded  in  mystery;  when  the  future  was  wrapped  in 
impenetrable  darkness,  and  night  brought  terrors  in  her 
train ;  when  every  bit  of  ill  luck  seemed  the  work  of  an 
evil  spirit  or  sorcerer,  and  disease  due  to  the  ill  will  of 
some  demon ;  when  dreams  were  frought  with  meaning, 
and  an  eclipse  or  an  earthquake  was  a  portent,  and  every 
chance  coincidence  an  omen  —  then,  indeed,  savage  men 
must  have  dwelt  constantly  in  a  state  of  fear.^ 

And  out  of  this  state  of  dread  it  seems  almost  inevitable 
that  he  should  have  made  appeal  for  help,  and  sought  with 
propitiatory  offerings  either  to  win  to  his  side  the  mys- 
terious spirits  dwelling  in  natural  phenomena,  authors  of 
all  those  ills  which  beset  him  ;  or  to  overcome  and  exorcise 
the  demon  with  curses,  magic  incantations  and  practices 
such  as  we  find  in  the  hjonns  of  the  Artharva  Veda.  Thus 
from  the  primitive  root  of  fear  it  is  comparatively  easy  to 
develop  those  other  motives  which  have  been  suggested 
as  the  source  of  religion,  viz.  the  sense  of  dependence  and 
the  sense  of  need  —  the  feeling  of  reverence,  the  attitude 
of  adoration,  and  the  various  social  functions  and 
practices  which  accompany  every  stage  of  religious  feel- 
ing and  belief. 

Yet,  after  all,  fear  is  a  negative  state  of  mind,  and  every 
negation  must  rest  on  a  positive  basis.  Why  does  man 
fear  —  the  mysterious  world  which  surrounds  him  —  the 
powers  of  nature,  strange  animals,  his  fellow-men?  Be- 
cause there  is  something  he  longs  and  hopes  for,  —  some 
satisfaction,  some  better  state  of  himself,  his  family,  or 
tribe,  —  some  dream  or  plan  which  he  fears  may  be 
thwarted  by  his  enemies,  by  ill  luck,  by  wizards  or  de- 
moniac powers.  Even  primitive  man  has  a  positive  ideal 
which  he  seeks  to  carry  out.  And  if  he  uses  curses  and 
incantations  against  wizards  and  demons,  he  at  the  same 
time  utters  appeals  and  prayers,  makes  offerings  and 

1  See  Robertson  Smith,  "  The  Rehgion  of  the  Semites."  Lecture  III 
on  the  "Jinn." 


8  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

sacrifices,  to  win  to  his  side  the  unseen  powers,  whatsoever 
they  may  be. 

Robertson  Smith  makes  the  distinction  between  the 
Jinni  or  demons  and  the  gods  that  while  both  are  super- 
natural beings  and  divine,  the  god  as  such  is  a  supernatural 
being  who  enters  into  stated  relations  with  man  or  a  com- 
munity of  men.  The  difference  between  the  two  is  not 
in  the  different  kind  of  power,  but  in  the  relation  with  man. 
The  gods  have  friendly  relations  with  a  circle  of  wor- 
shippers ;  the  "Jinni''  are,  so  to  speak,  outsiders.  To  the 
god  belongs  the  country  known  to  the  tribe,  and  especially 
some  sacred  spot  which  is  his  sanctuary ;  to  the  demons 
the  wastes  of  the  desert,  wild  glens,  and  impenetrable 
jungles.  Here,  then,  we  meet  with  the  first  of  the  op- 
positions (here  of  good  and  evil  powers)  in  which  religious 
experience  abounds.  It  rests,  as  we  see,  on  a  fundamental 
fact  of  human  consciousness.  From  such  an  opposition 
develop  the  positive  and  negative  forms  of  rites  and  cere- 
monies already  referred  to.  The  two  types  seem  to  meet 
in  the  savage  institution  of  "taboo,"  a  system  of  restric- 
tions on  man's  use  of  natural  objects  because  they  are 
divine,  ix.  primarily  —  charged  with  supernatural  powers, 
which  are  infectious,  holy,  consecrated  to  the  gods.  Also 
in  the  Semitic  religion,  however,  "taboo"  may  mean  that 
which  is  unclean.  There  is,  as  Robertson  Smith  points 
out,  no  distinct  boundary  in  the  Semitic  religion  between 
the  rules  of  holiness  and  rules  of  imcleanliness.  Both  go 
back  to  the  savage  notion  of  "taboo." 

So  the  motive  of  fear,  we  may  conclude,  springs  out  of 
the  fact  that  man  has  an  ideal.  The  two  motives  (of 
"hope"  and  "fear")  are  interestingly  brought  together 
in  those  records  of  human  thinking  which  come  to  us  from 
the  remote  past,  the  Egyptian  Pyramid  Texts,  which  we 
have  already  quoted.  The  chief  function  of  these  Texts, 
Breasted  tells  us,  "is  to  ensure  the  king's  felicity  in  the 
hereafter."  For  this  exist  the  utterances,  many  of  which 
are  magical  charms,  while  others  are  prayers  and  petitions 


I 


THE    PROBLEM   OF   RELIGIOUS   IDEALISM  9 

on  behalf  of  the  dead  king.  Thus  they  imply,  says 
Breasted,  a  great  hope  that  life  shall  continue  after  death, 
but  bound  up  with  this  hope  is  a  great  fear  —  the  fear  of 
that  great  catastrophe  which  must  come  to  all ;  hence  the 
dominant  note  of  these  Texts  is  ^'an  insistent,  passionate 
protest  against  death, '^  a  protest  in  which  all  nature  joins. ^ 

2  "The  sky  weeps  for  thee,  the  earth  trembles  for  thee, 
Clouds  darken  the  sky. 
The  stars  rain  down, 
The  Bows  (a  constellation)  stagger, 
The  bones  of  the  hell-hounds  tremble, 
The  (porters)  are  silent 
When  they  see  king  Unis 
Dawning  as  a  soul."  ' 


What  is  implied  in  the  state  of  mind  called  *' having 
an  ideal"? 

It  means,  first  of  all,  that  there  is  something  not  his 
actual  self  and  beyond  his  present  self,  yet  desirable  and 
good  for  him,  which  a  person  sets  before  himself  as  an 
object  of  attainment. 

It  involves  therefore,  first,  an  interest,  an  emotional 
attitude.  And  in  the  second  place,  it  involves  activity 
on  the  part  of  the  person  whose  ideal  it  truly  is.  If  pas- 
sionately loved,  a  life's  devotion  will  not  be  too  much  to 
give.  An  illustration  of  this  state  of  mind  would  be,  for 
instance,  the  case  of  some  poor  boy  in  one  of  our  villages, 
who  will  endure  all  sorts  of  hardships  and  privations  that 
he  may  go  to  college ;  as  the  boy  Erasmus  lived  on  mouldy 
crusts  and  slept  on  straw  that  he  might  attend  the  lectures 
of  the  Sorbonne  in  Paris.  Or  if  this  college  education 
comes  to  a  lad  as  a  ^'free  gift,"  as  it  does  perhaps  too  often 
nowadays,  then  it  may  be  the  boy's  ideal  will  be  to  be 

*  See  J.  H.  Breasted,  "  Religion  and  Thought  in  Ancient  Egypt,'5 
Leotures  III  and  IV. 

2  Pyramid  Texts,  #  1365.  » Ihid.,  #393. 


10  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

captain  of  the  college  football  team,  a  leader  of  his  group  ; 
or  it  may  be  his  dream  will  be  to  be  an  inventor  in  me- 
chanics, or  an  artist.  For  any  of  these  aims  the  boy  is 
ready  to  work  day  and  night,  to  cut  off  all  sorts  of  other 
interests  and  pursuits,  — 

"To  scorn  delights  and  live  laborious  days." 

An  instance  of  the  opposite  —  a  man  without  an  ideal  — 
is  Ibsen's  Peer  Gynt.  Supreme  egotist  and  fanciful 
dreamer,  imagining  himself  all  sorts  of  characters  and 
constantly  playing  a  part,  and  like  many  another  seeking 
restlessly  for  ever  new  experiences,  Peer  Gjoit  is  too  much 
absorbed  in  himself  to  make  any  plan  of  life,  or  to  find  any 
aim  which  claims  his  whole  allegiance.  Wrecked  at  last, 
wandering  voices  haunt  him,  telling  him  of  the  missed 
opportunities  of  his  life. 

"We  are  thoughts; 
Thou  shouldst  have  thought  us ; 
Feet  to  run  on 
Thou  shouldst  have  given  us ! 

"  We  are  deeds : 
Thou  shouldest  have  achieved  us  ! 
Doubt  the  throttler 
Has  crippled  and  ruined  us. 
On  the  Day  of  Judgment 
We'll  come  a-flock, 
And  tell  the  story,  — 
Then  woe  to  you !  "  ^ 

Yes,  when  a  man  has  an  ideal  which  is  to  him  as  ^'a  burn- 
ing and  a  shining  light,"  he  will  not  only  toil  to  win  it 
and  realize  it,  but  he  tends  to  worship  it  —  he  is  ready  to 
suffer  and  to  die  for  it.  It  becomes  his  guiding  star.  It 
gives  meaning  and  purpose  to  his  life  and  transforms  what 
was  otherwise  dreary,  desolate,  and  obscure.  Usually  it 
is  embodied  in  some  person  or  at  least  in  something 
concrete  and  personified.  As  an  illustration,  it  was 
thus  that  the  city  of!  Christminster  (Oxford)  became  the 
embodied  ideal  of  the  boy  Jude  Pauley.^ 

1  "  Peer  Gynt,"  Act  V,  Scene  VI. 

2  Thomas  Hardy,  "Jude  the  Obscure." 


THE    PROBLEM   OF   RELIGIOUS   IDEALISM  11 

".  .  .  It  had  been  the  yearning  of  his  heart  to  find  something  to 
anchor  on,  to  cling  to  —  for  some  place  which  he  could  call  admirable. 
Should  he  find  that  place  in  this  city  if  he  could  get  there?  Would 
it  be  a  spot  in  which,  without  fear  of  farmers,  or  hindrance,  or  ridicule, 
he  could  watch  and  wait,  and  set  himself  to  some  mighty  undertaking 
like  the  men  of  old  of  whom  he  had  heard  ?  As  the  halo  had  been  to 
his  eyes  when  gazing  at  it  a  quarter  of  an  hour  earlier,  so  was  the  spot 
mentally  to  him  as  he  pursued  his  dark  way. 

"  *It  is  a  city  of  light,'  he  said  to  himself. 

"  'The  tree  of  knowledge  grows  there,'  he  added,  a  few  steps  farther 
on. 

"  *It  is  a  place  that  teachers  of  men  spring  from  and  go  to.' 

"'It  is  what  you  may  call  a  castle,  manned  by  scholarship  and 
religion.' 

"  After  this  figure  he  was  silent  a  long  while,  till  he  added, 

"* It  would  just  suit  me.' " 

A  recent  illustration  of  such  an  attitude  is  that  of  Cap- 
tain Scott,  the  South  Pole  explorer,  and  his  comrades, 
when  with  loyal  courage  and  single-minded  devotion  they 
faced  death  on  the  bUzzard-swept  ice  fields  of  the  Ant- 
artic  Ocean. 

An  instance,  almost  as  interesting  still,  as  it  was  two 
generations  ago  when  Florence  Nightingale  ^  was  a  pioneer 
example  of  it,  is  the  case  of  the  woman  with  an  ideal  dif- 
ferent from  that  of  the  conventional,  or,  at  the  time,  so- 
cially-accepted ideal  for  woman,  who  must,  therefore,  to 
win  her  own  ideal  and  realize  it,  face  the  prejudices  and 
opposition,  and  scorn,  often  of  those  nearest  and  dearest 
to  her.2 

An  instance  from  history  is  the  case  of  Christopher 
Columbus.  Columbus  had  a  great  dream.  He  dreamt 
that  the  world  was  round  instead  of  flat,  as  was  the  ac- 
cepted view  at  that  time,  and  that  by  keeping  on  sailing 
one  would  come  back  to  the  same  point.  Columbus 
wanted  to  test  his  vision,  and  hoped  to  discover  unknown 
lands  and  prove  his  dream  a  reality.     We  have  all  read 

1  See  **Life  of  Florence  Nightingale,"  Part  I,  by  Sir  Edward  Cook. 

2  See  the  curious  article  on  this  subject  in  London  Spectator,  February, 
1914. 


12  THE    DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

of  his  struggles,  his  disappointments,  the  heart-rending 
refusals  and  delays  he  met  with,  and  of  how  he  held  on  to 
his  dream  and  gave  his  hfe's  devotion  to  prove  it  true. 

For  America,  the  great  historical  illustration  is  Abraham 
Lincoln,  martyr  to  the  cause  of  anti-slavery  and  the  pres- 
ervation of  the  union.  ^'  I  never  saw  so  sad  a  face,*' 
one  who  saw  him  has  said  of  him  —  ''His  face  bore  a  look, 
not  as  a  man  in  pain,  but  as  a  man  bearing  a  terrible 
burden  —  the  look  of  Another  who  had  suffered  on  the 
Cross." 

Or,  we  may  take  some  illustrations  of  what  is  the  mean- 
ing of  Ufe  in  relation  to  an  ideal  end  from  our  own  field 
of  rehgious  experience  —  from  the  parables  of  Jesus. 

"The  kingdom  is  like  unto  a  treasure  hid  in  a  field ;  which  a  man 
found  and  hid ;  and  in  his  joy  he  goeth  and  selleth  all  that  he  hath, 
and  buyeth  that  field. 

"  Again  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  like  unto  a  man  that  is  a  merchant 

seeking  goodly  pearls :  and  having  found  one  pearl  of  great  price,  he 

went  and  sold  all  that  he  had  and  bought  it." 

(Matt.  13:44,  45.) 

"  If  any  man  would  come  after  me,  let  him  deny  himself  and  take  up 
his  cross,  and  follow  me.  For  whosoever  would  save  his  life  shall 
lose  it ;  and  whosoever  shall  lose  his  life  for  my  sake  and  the  gospels* 
shall  save  it.  For  what  doth  it  profit  a  man  to  gain  the  whole  world, 
and  forfeit  his  life." 

(Mark  8 :  34-36.) 

Or,  again,  in  the  Gospel  of  John  — 

"I  come  that  they  may  have  life,  and  may  have  it  abundantly. 
I  am  the  good  shepherd ;  the  good  shepherd  layeth  down  his  life  for 
the  sheep.  He  that  is  an  hireling  and  not  the  shepherd,  whose  own 
the  sheep  are  not,  beholdeth  the  wolf  coming,  and  leaveth  the  sheep 
and  fleeth,  and  the  wolf  watcheth  them  and  scattereth  them:  he 
fleeth  because  he  is  an  hireling  and  careth  not  for  the  sheep." 

(John  10 :  10-14.) 

Men  live,  then,  by  ideals,  by  desire  for  the  '^better*' 
and  'Hhe  ought  to  be,''  and  the  content  of  these  ideals 
changes  with  man's  development.  Man's  desire  is  his 
own,  and  so  of  necessity  the  ideal  is  closely  associated  with 


THE    PROBLEM   OF   RELIGIOUS   IDEALISM  13 

the  thought  of  self.  It  must  be  striven  for  —  yet  it  is 
never  wholly  independent  of  the  environment.  Its  at- 
tainment is  in  part  conditioned  and  made  possible  by  what 
is  not  self. 

The  god  (or  gods)  of  savage  man  is  somewhat  dis- 
sociated from  the  object  of  desire.  His  god  is  that  power 
which  helps  him  to  win  the  better  state  he  seeks.  The 
good  of  primitive  man  is  chiefly  associated  with  good 
hunting,  the  winning  of  mate,  plenty  of  food,  protection 
from  disease,  wild  beasts,  and  the  catastrophes  of  the 
natural  world.  In  this  stage  the  god  is  the  god  not  of 
the  individual  alone,  but  of  his  kin,  i.e,  of  all  those  who 
are  bound  together  through  some  supposed  physical  tie 
to  the  same  animal  kind,  which  is  in  friendly  relations  with 
them  and  aids  them  with  its  supernatural  powers.  Since 
the  relations  with  the  god  involve  times  and  seasons, 
ritual  and  taboo,  rules  and  restrictions  and  special  places 
—  the  notion  of  '' sacred"  ^  comes  to  be  associated  with 
this  supernatural  power. 

But  as  the  ideal  of  primitive  man  becomes,  with  his 
growth,  more  and  more  ethical  and  spiritual,  i.e.  becomes 
an  '^ ought"  which  sometimes  is  set  over  against  the  per- 
sonally desired  object,  so  the  god  whom  man  worships 
tends  to  become  identified  with  this  ''ought  to  be,"  i.e. 
tends  to  become  an  unattainable  spiritual  ideal. 

A  recent  investigator  of  myths  and  legends  gives  the 
following  evolution  of  the  conception  of  God.  Passing 
over  the  demon  and  ancestor  which  cannot  properly,  he 
says,  give  the  preparatory  stage  for  this  conception,  he 
finds  the  starting  poi^t  in  the  civilizing  hero  who  in  the 
totem  stage  appears  in  animal  form.  The  chain  is  then : 
(a)  totem,  (6)  civilizing  hero-animal,  (c)  civilizing  hero- 
human,  (d)  god  with  a  specialized  function  —  (e)  God. 
As  illustrations,  he  gives  Jahwe  as  in  class  (c) ;  Heracles 
from  (c)  to  (d) ;   Zeus  passed  from  (d)  to  (e) ;   Mithras 

1  Robertson  Smith,  "The  Religion  of  the  Semites,"  on  the  meaning 
of  "taboo,"  p.  152  £f. 


14  THE   DKAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

was  still  nearer  (e),  in  which  class  is  the  God  of  modern 
Christianity.^ 

No  statements  certainly  about  the  beginnings  of  re- 
ligion can  be  more  than  hypotheses,  yet  it  seems  justi- 
fiable to  start  with  animism  or  a  belief  in  spirits  as  the 
universal  basis  of  definite  religious  belief.  Various  tend- 
encies led  to  this  belief,  of  which  perhaps  the  interpreta- 
tion of  dreams  and  hallucinations  was  the  chief  {i.e.  at 
least  according  to  Van  Gennep  and  RikUn).  It  is  also 
the  principal  motive  in  the  production  of  the  legend,  story, 
and  myth,  and  may  be  traced  back  at  last  to  desire  (so  Dr. 
Riklin,  a  pupil  of  Froed,  claims),  principally  to  desire  for 
power  of  a  social  or  magical  kind.  Pfleiderer  holds  that 
the  original  form  of  the  deity  was  an  union  of  the  collective 
ancestral  spirits  of  the  group  in  question,  with  some  per- 
sonified nature-power,  and  that  in  this  conception  two 
ideas  are  united,  viz.  the  superhuman,  unchanging  power 
of  the  natural  world,  and  the  relationship  with  men  which 
the  god  holds  by  virtue  of  the  blood  bond.  So  that  primi- 
tive religion  was  a  community  affair,  and,  though  in  itself 
not  moral,  had  within  it  the  germ  of  a  moral  development. 

Our  interest,  of  course,  is  chiefly  with  the  higher  re- 
ligions. If  we  want  to  follow  the  ethical  development  of 
religion  from  the  primitive  germ,  we  can  trace  it  fairly  well 
in  that  historical  religion  which  is  best  known  to  us  —  the 
religion  of  Israel.  In  the  Old  Testament  narrative,  two 
separate  writers  have  been  discovered,  called  respectively 
J  and  E  because  of  the  different  word  they  used  for  God, 
viz.  Jahwe  —  the  god  of  the  nomadic  tribes,  the  god  who 
dwelt  in  Sinai  and  was  the  god  of  the  lightnings  and  storms 
and  of  the  mountain  and  also  the  god  of  the  song  of  Deb- 
orah, who  leads  the  tribe  to  victory;  and  (2)  Elohim, 
a  word  used  to  express  collectively  the  local  gods  of  the 
people  of  Canaan  who,  as  the  Israelites  passed  to  the 
agricultural  stage,  under  the  form  of  Baalin  lords  of  the 
land  and  givers  of  fertility,  at  first  alternated  with,  and 

1  A.  Van  Gennep,  **  La  Formation  des  Legendes." 


THE    PROBLEM   OF   RELIGIOUS   IDEALISM  15 

finally  were  absorbed  into  the  original  conception  of  Jahwe. 
Robertson  Smith  ^  holds  that  all  Semitic  religions  have 
passed  through  the  totem  stage  and  that  this  is  a  develop- 
ment from  the  original  conception  of  the  Jinni,  who, 
finally,  became  the  friendly  gods  with  their  local  sanc- 
tuaries (developed  from  the  haunts  of  the  Jinni)  at  Shiloh, 
Bethel,  Kadesh-Barnea,  and  other  sacred  spots  where  the 
caravans  stopped  in  their  travels,  where  merchants,  pil- 
grims, and  other  wanderers  listened  to  the  story-teller  as 
with  rhythm  and  repetition,  as  in  the  East  to-day,  he  re- 
cites the  wonderful  stories  of  the  appearance  of  the  divine 
beings  at  the  sacred  stone,  well,  or  grove. 

As  the  Hebrew  tribe  settles  down  in  Canaan,  it  becomes 
more  united  in  itself.  It  has  to  fight  for  it»  existence  and 
for  the  possession  and  retention  of  the  land  with  the 
Canaanite  tribes  already  dwelling  there.  The  tribal  god 
Jahwe  tends  to  become  one  over  against  the  many  gods  of 
the  heathen.  He  is  lord  and  king,  the  god  who  helps  them 
to  victory.  A  crisis  for  the  nation  is  reached  in  the  reign 
of  Ahab,  when  the  people  as  a  whole  must  choose  between 
the  sterner  form  of  worship  of  Jahwe,  which  made  for  purity 
and  self-control,  and  the  worship  of  the  Baalim,  which  was 
a  glorification  of  the  powers  of  nature  and  which  worked 
toward  moral  degeneracy. 

Under  the  great  Israelitish  prophets  the  development 
toward  an  ethical  religious  attitude  takes  great  strides 
forward  from  the  critical  moment  when  Elijah's  prayer  is 
answered  and  by  an  external  sign  Jahwe,  the  God  of 
Isreal  is  vindicated  and  the  priests  of  Baal  rejected,  to 
the  culmination  point  in  the  purely  spiritual  religion  of 
Jeremiah  and  of  the  second  Isaiah.^  Under  the  former 
religion  has  become  a  matter  of  the  inner  life  rather  than 

1  Robertson  Smith,  *'  The  Rehgion  of  the  Semites." 

2  If  we  want  to  trace  this  development  f  m-ther,  we  may  do  so  in  the 
standard  works  on  the  prophets  of  Israel.  Professor  Comhill's  "  Prophets 
of  Israel "  gives  an  interesting,  brief  account  on  which  mine  is  based. 
See  for  a  parallel  development  the  religion  of  Ancient  Egypt  in  J.  H. 
Breasted's  "  Development  of  Religion  and  Thought  in  Ancient  Egypt." 


16  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

of  the  outer  act ;  under  the  latter  the  conception  of  Jahwe 
is  universalized.  He  is  no  longer  the  god  of  the  Hebrew 
people  alone. 

A  new  coloring  is  given  to  the  conception  of  Jahwe  in  the 
Psalms  of  the  exile.  He  is  the  redeemer,  ^Hhe  shadow  of  a 
great  rock  in  a  weary  land."  A  ''  refuge  "  from  the  storms 
of  life  —  the  good  shepherd.  In  the  drama  of  Job,  we 
meet  with  the  passionate  appeal  for  one  who  will  appreci- 
ate and  justify  the  ways  of  the  righteous,  together  with 
the  final  attitude  of  trust  and  submission  to  the  will 
of  God. 

Leaving  on  one  side  the  legislative  development  of  the 
religion  of  Israel,  together  with  the  Babylonian  and  Greek 
influences  of  the  post-exilic  period,  the  religion  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth  seems  to  me  the  logical  outcome  and  climax  of 
the  religious  conception  of  the  more  spiritual  of  the  great 
Hebrew  prophets. 

The  great  fundamental  concept  in  the  religion  of  Jesus 
is  the  spiritual  relationship  between  God  and  man.  Based 
on  this  thought  certain  elements  are  emphasized.  Jesus 
begins  his  ministry  with  the  words  of  John  the  Baptist  — 
'^  Repent,  for  the  Kingdom  of  God  is  at  hand."  In  form 
this  is  not  unlike  the  message  of  Amos  when  he  bursts  upon 
the  feasting  and  sacrifices  at  the  sanctuary  at  Bethel.  The 
points  emphasized  in  the  teachings  of  Jesus  as  we  get  at 
them  in  the  three  Synoptic  Gospels  seem  to  me  to  be :  — 

1st.  The  thought  of  God.  —  First,  as  perfect  in  righteous- 
ness, and  second,  as  a  loving  father.  He,  whose  love  pro- 
tects the  sparrow,  will  care  even  for  the  despised  of  this 
world  —  for  the  forsaken  and  sinners  —  i.e.  God  is  uni- 
versal, and  God  is  both  just  and  merciful. 

2d.  The  thought  of  man.  —  Every  man  is  potentially 
a  child  of  God,  but  he  must  make  this  potentiality  actual. 
He  must  be  perfect  as  his  Father  is  perfect.  He  must 
put  away  the  lusts  of  the  flesh  and  worldly  ambition,  all 
time-serving,  doubleness  of  nature,  and  self-seeking,  i.e.  he 
must  repent  and  be  born  again. 


THE    PROBLEM   OF   RELIGIOUS   IDEALISM  17 

3d.  The  tie  between  God  and  man  ^&  a  spiritual  bond.  — 
God  is  spirit  and  man  must  worship  him  in  spirit  and  in 
truth.  He  must  seek  to  carry  out  God's  will  —  and  this 
attitude  is  shown  by  the  spirit  of  the  law  and  not  by  the 
letter,  —  by  the  purity  of  heart,  single-mindedness,  and 
by  the  practice  of  the  spirit  of  human  kindness.  The 
possibilities  involved  in  this  attitude  are  infinite.  Hence 
those  stern  sayings  of  the  Master  —  ''He  that  loveth 
father  or  mother  more  than  me  is  not  worthy  of  me." 
And  to  him  who  would  bury  his  father  before  he  became  a 
disciple  —  ''Leave  the  dead  to  bury  their  dead,  and  follow 
me"  —  "He  that  would  save  his  life  must  lose  it,"  he 
must,  ix.j  seek  to  save  the  lost. 

This  relationship  between  God  and  man  is  reciprocal. 
We  learn  this  both  from  the  sayings  of  Jesus  and  from  the 
parables  —  "Seek  and  ye  shall  find.  Ask  and  it  shall  be 
opened  unto  you."  Notably  in  the  Beatitudes  —  "He 
that  doeth  the  will  of  God  shall  enter  into  the  kingdom," 
in  the  parables  of  the  Prodigal  Son,  the  house  builded  on 
a  rock,  the  Last  Judgment,  etc.  But  what  did  Jesus 
mean  by  the  coming  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  which  is  the 
heart  of  his  gospel?  This  "kingdom"  is  really  involved 
in  the  relationship  between  God  and  man.  This  is,  as 
we  have  seen,  a  spiritual  and  moral  relationship.  So  that 
first  of  all  the  kingdom  is  to  come  in  the  heart  of  every 
individual.  "The  Kingdom  of  God  is  within  you."  It 
is  a  matter  of  individual  decision  and  attitude.  But 
whatever  may  have  been  the  thought  of  Jesus  concerning 
his  own  Messiahship,  it  is  not  probable  that  his  thought 
was  so  entirely  different  from  that  of  his  forerunners,  the 
Hebrew  prophets,  or  from  the  conceptions  of  his  own 
generation  —  that  "the  kingdom"  should  not  have  had 
for  him  also  a  social  significance.  The  coming  of  the 
kingdom  in  the  heart  of  each  individual,  i.e.  the  coming 
of  the  spirit  of  infinite  love,  leads  inevitably  to  the  spiritual 
community. 

Or,  as  Paul  put  it,  the  atonement  doctrine  is  a  phase  of 


18  THE    DKAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

the  thought  that  men  are  members  one  of  another  and  so 
must  bear  each  other^s  burdens.  The  law  of  love  and  the 
social  nature  of  the  kingdom  are  really  correlatives  of  each 
other. 

The  thought,  then,  of  a  spiritually  regenerated  com- 
munity must  have  formed  a  part  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus. 
The  law  of  love  is  not  mere  social  sympathy.  The  two 
commandments  have  to  be  taken  together  —  love  to  man 
in  the  light  of  love  to  God.  It  is  sometimes  said  that 
nothing  new  was  involved  in  the  teachings  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth.  Already  the  law  of  love  to  God  and  love  to 
man  had  been  laid  down  as  fundamental  in  the  Hebrew 
law  book  of  Deuteronomy,  and  is  found  in  the  teachings 
of  the  Jewish  Rabbi,  Hillel.  Amos  and  the  other  prophets 
had  emphasized  the  ethical  nature  of  the  bond  between 
God  and  man  and  the  thought  of  a  righteous  community. 
Hosea  had  set  forth  God's  mercy,  and  the  spirit  of  for- 
giving, compassionate  love  as  the  crown  of  the  righteous 
life.  Jeremiah  emphasized  the  inwardness  and  univer- 
sality of  religion.  All  this  is  true.  Yet  when  we  picture 
to  ourselves  this  gracious  personality  against  the  back- 
ground of  the  simple  village  Ufe  of  Galilee,  as  it  is  given  to 
us  in  the  three  synoptic  gospels  —  we  know  that  something 
has  been  added  to  reUgion  by  this  Hfe,  and  that  it  is  just 
the  uniqueness  of  this  divinely  human  personality;  it  is 
the  actual  and  entire  consecration  to  his  ideal,  and  the 
perfect  translating  of  his  gospel  into  his  own  life  which 
makes  him  the  Master  whom  men  love  to  imitate  and 
follow.  For  Jesus,  then,  religion  is  essentially  an  inner 
attitude,  the  relation  of  the  finite  soul  to  God  —  for  right- 
eousness is  first  of  all  or  essentially  a  matter  of  individual 
choice  and  initiative.  But  no  righteousness  can  stop 
here,  for  there  is  no  choice  which  does  not  involve  action. 
The  kingdom  of  righteousness,  then,  —  the  coming  of  the 
Son  of  Man  —  the  realization  of  the  spirit  of  love,  will  be 
its  realization  in  a  group;  or  the  ^'kingdom  of  God"  is 
the  community  of  those  who  have  accepted  and  pledged 


THE    PROBLEM   OF   RELIGIOUS   IDEALISM  19 

themselves  to  practise  this  spirit,  or  law  of  the  kingdom. 
This  thought  of  the  spiritual  community  surely  appears 
in  the  teaching  of  Jesus  concerning  the  kingdom. 

The  essence  of  Paul's  teachings  seems  to  me  not  differ- 
ent from  this,  i.e.  the  heart  of  Paul's  Christianity,  as 
expressed  in  the  thirteenth  chapter  of  First  Corinthians. 
It  is  true  that  Paul  emphasized  salvation  through  the 
suffering  on  the  cross,  and  through  the  death  and  resur- 
rection of  Christ.  The  religion  ahke  of  Jesus  and  of  Paul 
is  a  redemptive  rehgion  —  but  while  Jesus  lays  stress  on 
individual  effort,  Paul,  without  denying  this  as  essential, 
'^For  if  any  man  have  not  the  spirit  of  God  he  is  none  of 
His"  —  for  the  identification  of  the  individual  with  the 
death  and  resurrection  of  Christ,  means,  I  take  it,  his 
acceptance  of  the  Christ-spirit,  —  Paul  lays  special  stress 
on  the  notion  of  redemption  through  grace.  It  is  not 
Ukely  that  Paul  got  the  thought  of  the  power  of  the  death 
and  resurrection  of  a  divine  being  out  of  his  own  head. 
Already  in  Hosea  and  Second  Isaiah,  we  have  met  with 
the  conception  of  the  atoning  life  in  the  picture  of  the 
suffering  servant  of  Israel.  In  Egypt,  in  western  Asia, 
and  in  Greece,  the  violent  death  and  resurrection  of  a  god 
had  long  been  celebrated  with  special  rites  and  mysteries 
which  survive  in  folk  customs  even  to-day. 

The  rhythmic^  phenomena  of  nature  which,  in  temperate 
zones  at  least,  is  universal  and  striking  and  intimately 
bound  up  with  the  well-being  of  primitive  man,  —  viz. 
the  death  of  vegetation  in  the  autumn  and  its  resurrection 
in  the  spring,  —  is,  according  to  scholars,  the  original 
fact  at  the  root  of  this  group  of  myths.^  The  ritual  of 
Osiris,  of  Adonis  and  Attis,  of  Dionysos,  of  Demeter  and 
Kore,  were  originally  rites  to  celebrate  this  dying  and 
revival,  and  to  secure  the  return  of  life  to  the  nature- world. 

1  The  activity  of  mind  is  a  rhythmic  process,  and  the  mind  finds 
its  own  activity  mirrored  in  nature,  see  e.g.  in  "  The  Sun  Myth  "  —  "The 
Wanderer,"  etc. 

2  See  J.  G.  Frazer,  "  The  Golden  Bough,"  Chap.  III. 


20  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

The  Adonis  rites  were  practised  at  Antioch  and,  as  Pfleiderer 
points  out,  were  probably  taken  over  into  the  primitive 
community,  as  we  know  so  many  pagan  rites  have  been 
since  taken  up  by  the  Christian  Church  everywhere.  Paul 
finds  these  rites  at  Antioch,  but  for  him  they  are  trans- 
formed into  a  spiritual  meaning,  —  the  new  meaning  is 
the  death  of  the  old  life  of  sin,  and  the  victory  over  death 
and  rebirth  into  the  new  life  ^^hid  with  Christ  in  God'' 
through  the  coming  into  the  heart  of  the  spirit  of  Christ, 
i.e.  of  that  spirit  of  righteousness  and  of  ^^love  which  never 
faileth."  This  thought  of  redemption  or  salvation  by 
grace  comes  more  and  more  to  the  fore  in  the  Christian 
Church,  as  we  can  discover  from  the  mediaeval  prayers 
and  hymns,  and  tends  to  drive  into  the  background  the 
thought  of  individual  effort  for  righteousness.  For  ex- 
ample :  '^0  Lord,  who  dost  work  out  our  offences,  do  then 
comfort  us  who  faithfully  call  upon  thee,  that  thou 
wouldest  blot  out  our  transgressions  and  restore  us  from 
death  to  the  land  of  the  living  through  Christ  our  Lord," 
or  ^'Lamb  of  God  who  takest  away  the  sins  of  the  world, 
grant  us  thy  peace."  This  conception  of  salvation  by 
grace  in  so  far  as  it  retains  its  spiritual  significance,  is  the 
thought  of  the  vicarious  atonement  of  self-sacrificing  love, 
expressed  by  Browning  in  the  climax  of  the  poem  of  Saul : — 

"He  who  did  most,  shall  bear  most;   the  strongest  shall  stand  most 

weak. 
'Tis  the  weakness  in  strength,  that  I  cry  for !  my  flesh  that  I  seek 
In  the  Godhead !    I  seek  and  I  find  it.     O  Saul,  it  shall  be 
A  Face  like  my  face  that  receives  thee ;  a  Man  like  to  me, 
Thou  shalt  love  and  be  loved  by,  for  ever :  a  Hand  like  this  hand 
Shall  throw  open  the  gates  of  new  life  to  thee !    See  the  Christ  stand." 

Here  we  reach  that  notion  of  the  eternal  Christ,  which, 
as  an  ideal^  is  the  ideal  of  Christendom  for  the  most  part 
to-day. 

This  brief  outline  of  the  development  of  the  historical 
religion  best  known  to  us  is  given,  not  as  in  any  way  a 
complete  account,  nor  the  only  form  of  development  the 


THE   PKOBLEM    OF   RELIGIOUS   IDEALISM  21 

religious  ideal  may  take,  but  to  show  the  trend  of  develop- 
ment in  one  type  of  religious  experience ;  to  show,  that  is, 
how  this  ideal  may  become  moraUzed  and  spiritualized. 
At  each  stage  the  thought  of  the  divine  is  conditioned  by 
the  content  of  man's  need,  desire,  and  longing.  The 
thought  of  God  is  at  once  a  conception  of  something  in 
itself  valuable,  a  goal  of  striving,  and  also  it  is  a  pragmatic 
conception  of  that  which  will  aid  and  further  the  striving 
itself.  Religion  lives  by  ideals,  i.e.  religious  experience 
is  an  attitude  to  an  invisible  world.  To  live  in  the 
light  of  an  ideal  means  both  the  striving  to  attain  the 
ideal,  and  self-surrender  to  its  guidance.  This,  I  take' 
it,  is  in  form  the  higher  life  which  religious  experience/ 
relates  of.  ^ 

While  the  content  of  the  religious  ideal  changes  with  1, 
the  spiritual  and  intellectual  growth  of  man,  the  fact  of 
the  ideahty  of  rehgion  remains,  for  it  has  its  roots  as  deep 
as  human  life  itself.     It  springs,  as  we  have  seen,  out  of 
man's  great  need  in  a  world  to  which  he  is  never  com-  | 
pletely  adjusted,  and  which  is  full  of  inevitable  tragedy  i 
and  pain ;  and  also  out  of  his  deep  dream  and  longing  for ; 
a  supreme  good. 

If  the  fact  of  the  ideality  of  religion  is  granted,  then 
certain  other  propositions  follow :  — 

1st.  The  universality  of  religion,  —  at  least  in  pos- 
sibility. By  possibiUty  I  mean :  Not  that  all  men  ac- 
tually are  religious,  but  that  the  possibility  follows,  since 
all  men  are  capable  of  being  religious,  i.e.  of  striving 
for,  and  giving  themselves  to  a  supreme,  unseen  good, 
or  because  in  other  words  —  Ideality  is  a  universal  char- 
acteristic of  normal  human  nature;  this  fact  explains 
why  no  tribe  has  been  found  above  the  lowest  conditions 
of  savagery,  which  has  not  some  sort  of  religion ;  and  it 
also  explains  what  is  meant  when  on  the  plane  of  spirit- 
ual religion  it  is  said  that  all  men  are  '^Children  of 
God." 

2d.  It  is  impossible  that  a  life  which  lives  for  the  sen- 


22  THE   DKAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

sations  of  the  moment,  whose  principle  is  ''Gather  ye 
roses  while  ye  may/'  should  be  a  rehgious  life.  The  ideal 
is  always  in  some  sense  beyond  present  experience. 

3d.  That  religion  is  not  life  according  to  nature,  if  the 
natural  life  means  the  life  of  man  as  he  at  any  moment  is. 
Religion  means  a  redemption,  a  ''new  birth,''  a  transfor- 
mation through  the  power  of  the  ideal,  though  this  trans- 
formation may  come  by  gradual  growth,  as  well  as  by  sud- 
den revelation  and  conversion. 

Religious  experience,  then,  cannot  be  described  simply  as 
"natural,"  if  this  term  is  used  as  modern  science  uses  it, 
for  the  transformation  of  religion  cannot  be  expressed  in 
terms  of  natural  law  as  we  describe  and  measure  the 
transformations  of  energy  —  for  the  transformation  or 
regeneration  of  rehgious  experience  is  in  a  sense  a  miracle, 
indescribable  and  occult. 

4th.  Since  to  have  an  ideal  means  actively  to  seek  means 
to  attain  it  and  to  carry  it  out  in  Hfe,  that  is,  to  embody 
the  ideal  in  the  actual,  therefore  religious  experience  will 
always  have  its  rites  and  dogmas,  and  an  ethical  religion 
its  forms  of  social-moral  activity.  But  since  the  essence 
of  reUgion  is  in  the  transformed  life  itself,  in  the  spirit  and 
not  in  the  letter,  nothing  which  puts  an  emphasis  on  the 
means  to  the  ideal  Ufe,  or  on  a  merely  external  good,  — 
on  the  improvement  of  social  conditions,  e.g.  as  if,  as 
far  as  the  spiritual  life  is  concerned,  they  were  ends  in 
themselves,  —  is  religion,  or  can  ever  completely  satisfy 
the  religious  spirit.  Spiritual  leaders  have  found  the 
essence  of  religion  in  that  saying  of  St.  Augustine's  — 
"Our  souls  are  restless  till  they  find  rest  in  Thee."  If 
religion  is  idealistic,  then,  clearly,  union  with  the  ideal  is 
a  forever-beyond-attainment.  Religion,  therefore,  seeks 
that  which  is  in  one  sense  the  impossible. 

5th.  Religion,  although  in  some  aspects  more  an  affair 
of  the  will  and  of  the  emotion  than  of  the  intellect,  yet,  in 
so  far  as  its  essence  is  ideality,  is  of  the  reason,  for  ideals 
are  created  by  reason.    To  be  sure,  we  cannot,  as  the 


THE    PROBLEM   OF   RELIGIOUS   IDEALISM  23 

older  psychology  did,  separate  the  various  faculties  of 
man  —  the  intellect,  will,  and  emotions  —  and  shut  them 
up  each  in  its  own  compartment  in  the  brain.  These 
faculties  play  into  each  other's  hands,  so  to  speak.  Yet 
we  must  acknowledge  a  distinction  between  them.  An 
ideal,  though  it  implies  activity  and  both  will  and 
emotion,  is  also  an  idea  of  the  mind  and  as  such  be- 
longs to  the  world  of  thought ;  and,  in  the  second  place, 
an  ideal  is  not  that  which  man  merely  feels^  but  that 
which  he  judges  to  be  good  or  the  ''best,"  but  judg- 
ments are  tools  of  the  reason;  and,  in  the  third  place, 
in  so  far  as  religion  is  ethicalj  its  dependence  upon 
reason  seems  perfectly  clear.  As  we  shall  see  more 
fully  later  on,  a  universal  principle  of  action,  free  from 
self-interest  and  independent  of  results,  which  is  the 
principle  of  the  absolutely  good-will,  can  only  be  given 
by  reason. 

A  word,  however,  must  be  said  about  the  meaning  of 
the  term  reason  in  this  connection.  In  using  this  word 
here  I  mean  to  make  a  distinction  between  the  process  of 
abstract  reasoning  —  the  analyzing  of  logical  concepts  and 
of  hypotheses ;  between  that  process  which  the  German 
philosophers  call  ''the  understanding,"  and  reason  in  the 
wider  and  commoner  use  of  the  term.  By  reason  in  re- 
lation to  religious  experience,  I  mean  that  faculty  which, 
from  the  basis  of  all  the  past  concrete  experience,  and  of 
the  more  or  less  unconscious  and  inarticulate  intuitions, 
clearly  and  consciously  draws  its  conclusions ;  distinguishes 
between  absolute  and  relative  issues ;  sets  up  standards  of 
value  and  determines  which  "revelations"  (so-called)  to 
consciousness  are  divine ;  which  gives,  in  a  word,  to  finite 
experience  an  ideal  standard  and  goal.  A  good  illustra- 
tion of  this  type  of  the  synthetic  function  of  reason  is  to 
be  found  in  the  story  of  the  Buddha,  when,  meditating 
under  the  Bo-tree,  he  discovered  the  origin  of  misery  and 
the  way  of  escape.  It  was  a  state  of  deepest  reflection 
which  led  to  enlightenment.    It  involved  reflection  on 


24  THE  DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

the  process  of  life,  and  also  an  actual  living  and  concrete 
experience  of  it.^ 

No  human  reason,  of  course,  is  completely  enhghtened 
or  sure  to  see  the  whole  of  the  issue  in  any  given  concrete 
experience.  An  absolute  reason  or  insight  would  see  the 
issue  in  its  wholeness,  or  in  all  its  relationships.  In  the 
content  of  man's  highest  reUgious  ideal,  God  is  partly 
one  *' whose  judgments  are  true  and  righteous  altogether," 
one  who  knows  or  sees  the  world  as  it  is,  i.e,  not  in  frag- 
ments, but  in  its  entirety. 

P^  But  if  we  have  estabUshed  the  fact  of  the  ideaUty  of 
rehgion,  we  have  not  thereby  distinguished  religion  from 
morahty.  Morahty  also  finds  its  basic  element  in  ideality, 
and  every  proposition  which  we  have  deduced  from  this 
fact  of  ideaUty  for  rehgion  is  equally  true  of  morahty. 

If  we  disentangle  rehgion  from  its  external  forms  and 
superstitions  with  the  emotional  accompaniments,  if,  i.e., 
we  pull  off  the  outer  wrappings  and  reach  rehgion's  heart, 
have  we  anything  left  but  morahty  ?  —  that  is  our  present 
question. 

Evidently  the  spheres  of  rehgion  and  morality  move  in 
pathswhichlie  very  close  together,  and  those  agnostics  of  our 
time  who  remain  earnest  and  humanitarian  in  spirit,  hold 
that  religion  of  a  spiritual  type  is  simply  pure  morahty. 

Yet  the  conclusion  that  rehgion  is  nothing  but  morality 
or  "morahty  touched  with  emotion,"  or  as  our  humani- 
tarian age  might  choose  to  express  it,  —  religion  is  phi- 
lanthropy and  social  service,  or  even  the  effort  to  amelio- 
rate economic  conditions,  —  does  not  satisfy  us.  We  feel 
instinctively  that  the  spheres  of  rehgion  and  morahty, 
close  as  they  are  together,  yet  are,  in  some  way,  different. 

Let  us  consider,  then,  the  relation  between  religion  and 
morahty,  and  let  us  begin  by  considering  these  two  in  their 
earliest  form. 

*  The  future  Buddha's  experience  on  the  drive  in  the  Park.  *'  Bud- 
dhism in  Trans."     H.  Warren,  p.  56  ff. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  RELIGIOUS  IDEALISM  25 

To  a  superficial  view,  it  appears  as  if  savage  religion 
were  entirely  divorced  from  morality,  and  yet  the  savage 
man's  religion  was  a  social  affair,  and,  in  truth,  for  primi- 
tive man  his  socially  organized  hfe  was  wholly  permeated 
with  rehgion.  The  individual  man  in  our  sense  of  the  word 
did  not  exist.  Primitive  man's  dream  of  good  was  boimd 
up  with  the  welfare  of  his  group,  with  his  tribe,  over 
against  another  tribe  or  the  hostile  powers  of  nature. 

ReUgion  is  the  bond  which  unites  the  community  or 
group  to  its  ^Hotem,"  to  the  beneficent  nature  power,  the 
spirit  ancestor,  the  civihzing  hero  or  king,  the  lord  of 
battles  and  victory,  i.e.  to  whatever  form,  in  the  given 
case,  the  tribal  god  may  assume.  For  all  primitive  peoples, 
as  Robertson  Smith  points  out,  the  tie  which  binds  the 
worshippers  to  their  god  and  so  to  one  another  is  the  blood 
bond,^  The  worshippers  and  the  god  are  of  the  same  kin. 
This  bond  finds  outward  expression  in  rites  of  lustration, 
sacrifice,  and  taboo;  in  ceremonies  and  festivals  with 
their  sacred  marches,  dance,  and  song. 

Primitive  religion  was  then  social  and  consisted  very 
largely  of  a  series  of  acts  and  outward  observances.  And, 
although  it  is  generally  said  that  savage  religions  are 
unmoral,  yet  since  the  savage  religion  was  on  the  side  of 
law  and  order  and  the  maintenance  of  the  group,  whatever 
there  was  of  moraUty  was  contained  in  these  social  re- 
Hgious  observances.  But  the  tendency  is  for  such  ex- 
ternal religious  observances  to  gain  in  importance  over 
the  inner  spirit,  i.e.  for  the  significance  of  the  bond  of 
kinship  and  union,  itself  to  go  into  the  background.  But 
now  and  again  arise  those  seers,  prophets,  and  reformers, 
men  who  themselves  have  had  dreams  and  have  heard  the 
voice  of  the  god,  who  call  the  people  back  to  the  inner 
meaning  of  their  rites  and  observances,  to  the  original 
message  of  the  god.    With  the  exception  of  those  cases 

*  Blood  bond,  that  is,  the  common  to  all  —  the  universal — the  socially 
uniting;  to  God,  to  the  universe;  it  is  the  divine  or  the  more  than 
individual  —  this  is  the  warrant  of  its  worth. 


26  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

where  the  motive  was  of  a  political  or  self-seeking  nature, 
this  is,  perhaps,  the  significance  of  the  oracles  of  pagan 
gods,  and  this  is  the  message  of  those  Hebrew  prophets 
like  Amos,  when,  descending  upon  the  feasting  of  the 
Israehtes,  he  sacrificed  in  honor  of  Jahwe  at  the  market- 
place of  Bethel :  — 

"Woe  unto  you  that  desire  the  day  of  the  Lord !  Wherefore  would 
ye  have  the  day  of  the  Lord?  It  is  darkness  and  not  light.  I  hate, 
I  despise  your  feasts,  and  I  will  take  no  delight  in  your  solemn  as- 
semblies. Yes,  though  ye  offer  unto  me  your  burnt  offerings  and 
meal  offerings,  I  will  not  accept  them,  neither  will  I  regard  the  peace 
offerings  of  your  fat  hearts.  Take  them  away  from  me,  the  noise  of 
thy  songs ;  for  I  will  not  hear  the  melody  of  thy  viols.  But  let  judg- 
ment roll  down  as  waters,  and  righteousness  as  a  mighty  stream." 

(Amos  5 :  19-25.) 

The  above  suggests  perhaps  the  way  in  which  morality 
at  the  beginning  tends  to  separate  itself  from  religion. 
ReHgion  would,  for  the  mass  of  the  people,  become  iden- 
tified more  and  more  with  external  rites,  —  the  ^'  taboo  '' 
and  the  penalties  following  an  infringement  of  these  rules, 
together  with  ceremonies  for  special  times  and  seasons; 
while  morality  would  be  that  which  in  his  everyday  life 
a  man  beheves  in  his  heart  to  be  right  and  his  social  duty 
to  practise.  With  the  incoming  of  individualism  with 
Stoicism  and  Christianity,  this  separation  gains  in  em- 
phasis until  it  reaches  its  culmination  in  the  individualism 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  until  men  have  even  come  to 
think  of  religion  as  hostile  to  morality.  And  in  truth  it 
is  not  difficult  to  find  instances  of  this  hostility,  from  the 
simple  case  of  the  negro,  cited  by  Professor  Palmer,  who 
stole  a  chicken  on  his  way  home  from  prayer  meeting,  to 
the  practices  of  the  Holy  Inquisition  in  the  Middle  Ages.^ 

iln  his  book  "The  Man  Furthest  Down,"  B.  T.  Washington  de- 
scribes how  the  Christian  religion  has  become,  in  Sicily,  a  matter  of 
superstition  which  has  no  connection  with  morality. 

"The  image  of  the  Virgin,"  he  says,  "has  become  little  more  than 
a  fetish  to  conjure  with,"  e.g.  the  peasant  who  proposes  to  avenge 
himself  on  his  landlord  by  stealing  from  him  will  pray  before  one  of 


THE    PROBLEM   OF   RELIGIOUS   IDEALISM  27 

But  I  am  not  concerned  with  the  origin  and  develop- 
ment of  rehgion  (or  of  morahty)  from  its  primitive  be- 
ginnings, except  in  so  far  as  to  show  the  connection  between 
the  rehgion  of  to-day  and  the  primitive  form  of  rehgion,  i.e. 
the  universal  elements  of  religious  experience  as  a  whole. 

The  first  distinction  which  appears,  then,  between  re- 
hgion and  morality  is  this :  While  both  are  concerned  with 
socially  organized  life,  morality  is  primarily  interested  in 
the  inner  virtues  and  purity  of  heart,  and  in  outer  deeds  as 
an  expression  of  this  changing  and  growing  inner  life; 
religion,  on  the  other  hand,  as  a  socially  uniting  bond,  has 
to  be  embodied  in  institutions  and  creeds  which  tend  to 
become  unchanging,  static,  and  meaningless  in  respect  to 
morality.  Hence  it  is  sometimes  said  religion  is  simply 
'^  ossified  morality. '' 

Our  interest,  however,  is  only  with  the  spiritual  form  of 
religion,  and  it  is  evident  from  the  records  of  concrete 
religious  experience  that  there  is  something  more  in  re- 
ligion than  mere  external  observance.  Indeed,  James  in 
his  analysis  passes  over  external  religious  observances 
entirely  as  unworthy  to  be  called  religious  experience. 

Possibly  the  relation  might  be  expressed  as  a  circular 
one.  Morality  is  deeply  embedded  in  rehgion  and  sanc- 
tioned and  illumined  by  it,  and  religion  is  controlled,  di- 
rected, and  spiritualized  by  morality.  Each  is  an  inner 
spirit,  an  attitude,  and  each  is  a  bond  which  unites  the 
members  of  a  community  to  one  another  and  to  the  com- 
munity itself  as  a  whole.  Religion  is  as  much  practice 
as  morality,  and  in  its  higher  types,  religion  is  as  ethical 
as  moral  practice  itself.  About  rehgious  practice,  how- 
ever, there  is  a  glow,  an  enthusiasm,  which  morahty  pure 
and  simple  hardly  gives,  though  even  here  we  must  not 
forget  the  saying  of  Kant  that  the  two  things  which  filled 
him  with  reverence  and  awe  were  the  starry  heavens  above 
and  the  moral  law  within  man. 

these  images,  before  starting  out,  for  success,  and  if  successful  he  may 
offer  to  the  saints  a  portion  of  what  he  has  stolen. 


28  THE   DRA.MA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Is  the  difference  in  emotional  atmosphere,  then,  the  only- 
distinction  between  rehgion  and  morality? 

Whatever  further  distinctions  between  rehgion  and 
morality  the  sequel  may  reveal,  one  fundamental  differ- 
ence at  once  appears.  This  fundamental  difference  be- 
tween religion  and  morahty,  however,  hes  very  close  to 
that  which  constitutes  their  essential  likeness,  or  to 
that  which  chiefly  they  have  in  common,  viz.  both  religion 
and  morality  demand  an  absolute  and  ultimate  value. 

To  summarize  our  results  so  far:  Both  rehgion  and 
morahty  have  an  ideal  standard  of  value.  Morality  says 
to  the  finite  individual:  ''You  ought  to  strive  to  attain 
this  ideal  goal."  Morahty  is  a  serial  process  —  a  ''pro- 
gression," as  it  is  called  —  no  last  term  to  the  series  is 
possible.  An  absolute  good  cannot  be  attained  by  the 
finite  and  the  partial  —  there  is  always  something  beyond 
to  be  accomphshed  —  some  further  duty  to  be  done. 

On  the  other  hand,  rehgion  says  to  the  finite  individual : 
There  is  a  divine  order.  It  is  more  than  you,  and  yet  you 
are  even  now  one  with  it  —  hence  your  sense  of  security 
and  certainty  of  permanence;  your  blessedness,  your 
peace. 

Morahty  emphasizes  obhgation,  striving,  self-initiative, 
creation  of  goodness  through  deeds  on  the  part  of  the  finite 
individual;  while  rehgion  emphasizes  acceptance,  obedi- 
ence, self-surrender  of  the  individual  to  that  good  which 
is  greater  than  he  and  which  he  did  not  create.  The  ideal 
of  morahty  is  an  infinitely  removed  goal.  It  is  an  idea  in 
men's  minds,  a  law,  a  categorical  imperative  to  be  sought, 
achieved,  obeyed,  and  carried  out  in  practice  —  yet  it 
remains  forever  an  "ought  to  be"  which  is  never  fully 
attained  by  moral  striving.  But  religion  is  more  than 
practice.  It  is  a  faith,  a  certainty.  Religious  faith  holds 
that  this  ideal,  this  "ought  to  be,"  is  also  an  "is."  It 
holds  that  however  the  actual  embodiment  of  the  moral 
ideal  in  finite  life  may  fail  and  change  and  fluctuate,  the 
ideal  itself  is  permanent  and  changeless,  —  forever  the  Son 


THE    PROBLEM   OF   RELIGIOUS   IDEALISM  29 

of  Righteousness  is  realized  in  the  being  of  God.  '*The 
heavens  shall  wax  old  as  a  garment,  as  a  vesture  shalt  thou 
change  them  and  they  shall  be  changed,  but  thou  art  the 
same  and  thy  days  shall  know  no  end.'^  Religious  faith 
holds,  moreover,  that  man  may  commune  with  this  Son 
of  Righteousness  in  such  a  way  as  he  cannot  with  a  re- 
flective ideal  of  his  own  creation. 

Such  is  religious  faith,  but  is  this  faith  justified  ?  Is  this 
communion  with  God  an  actual  experience,  and  if  so,  in 
what  sense? 

There  are  few  thoughtful  minds  who  have  not  sooner 
or  later  asked  this  question. 

The  philosopher  perhaps  may  take  refuge  in  subjectivity 
and  feel  — 

"If  there's  no  Sun,  I  still  can  have  the  Moon ; 
If  there's  no  Moon,  the  Stars  my  needs  suffice ; 
And,  if  these  fail,  I  have  my  Evening  Lamp ; 
Or,  lampless,  there's  my  trusty  Tallow  Dip ; 
And,  if  the  Dip  goes  out,  my  Couch  remains. 
Where  I  may  sleep  and  dream  there's  Light  again."  * 

The  practical  man  of  affairs,  or  the  reformer  too  much 
absorbed  in  actual  doing  to  stop  to  reflect  whether  it  is 
all  worth  while :  the  poet  whose  — 

"  Imagination  bodies  forth 
The  forms  of  things  unknown  " 

till  these  airy  nothings  of  his  brain  seem  more  real  than 
any  outer  world;  the  seer  who  beholds  things  invisible 
and  hears  voices  unheard  by  other  men ;  the  mystic  lost 
in  ecstatic  experience ;  these,  perhaps,  do  not  at  the  mo- 
ment of  absorption  ask  this  question,  but  it  is  asked  by  the 
reflective  consciousness  wherever  found.  It  is  asked  by 
the  thoughtful  child;  it  is  asked  by  questioning,  tragic 
youth  eagerly  seeking  to  mould  the  world  to  the  dear 
desires  of  its  heart ;  it  is  asked  by  the  mature  man  whose 
life  has  been  brought  into  close  touch  with  some  of  life's 
deeper  and  heartrending  experiences. 
*  John  Kendrick  Bangs. 


30  THE    DRAMA    OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Yes,  this  is  the  ultimate  problem  buried  deep  in  the  heart 
of  rehgion.  It  is  a  vital  problem,  for  close  to  it  is  the 
question  —  is  life  itself  worth  while  ? 

It  has  been  said  that  even  if  there  were  no  God,  it  would 
be  better  to  be  brave  than  cowardly,  true  than  false,  un- 
selfish and  kind  than  selfish  and  cruel.  Such  a  view 
seems  a  matter  of  course,  but  without  asking  what  the 
term  ''better'^  could  signify  and  whether  this  position  is 
logically  tenable,  we  must  admit  that  it  is  a  view  which 
is  lacking  in  encouragement  and  hope.  ^^  Though  he 
tarry  long,  yet  he  will  surely  come  in  the  end.''  This 
is  the  attitude  of  religious  faith.  And  this  position  is  not 
a  mercenary  one.  What  man  who  has  worked  for  an  un- 
popular cause  in  which  he  believed,  has  not  felt  that  it 
made  all  the  difference  that  truth  was  on  his  side,  and  that 
people  were  bound  to  see  truth  in  the  end?  Probably, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  every  man  who  has  a  serious  purpose 
and  a  ''cause"  has  reUgious  faith,  whether  he  acknowledge 
it  or  not.  He  believes  that  his  ''cause"  is  a  "holy  cause" 
and  will  win  in  the  end,  i.e.  he  beheves  that  it  is  really  in 
accord  with  the  nature  of  things. 

But  to  hold  the  faith  is  not  to  prove  that  it  is  justified. 
And  so  we  return  once  more  to  our  problem :  Is  there  a 
spiritual  rehgion  which  is  in  essence  anything  but  mo- 
raUty?  Must  we  in  the  end  identify  a  spiritual  religion 
with  morality,  or  does  something  of  the  primitive  con- 
ception of  the  divine  remain  as  a  reahty  which  can  be  won 
to  respond  to  man's  needs  and  which  upholds  his  ideals? 
Does  the  dream  come  true?  Is  the  fundamental  desire 
of  man,  as  expressed  in  the  prayer  of  St.  Augustine,  sat- 
isfied? 

The  above  problem  is  a  form  of  the  problem  of  the 
relation  between  the ' '  ought ' '  and  the  "  is  "  and  one  of  those 
"  oppositions  "  in  which,  as  we  shall  find,  religious  experience 
abounds.  This  is,  is  it  not,  what  we  all  want  to  know  ^- 
it  is  the  ultimate  problem  for  rehgion  and  that  which  drives 
the  religious  consciousness  at  last  to  philosophy. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   RELIGIOUS   IDEALISM  31 

While  we  are  primarily  concerned  with  religion,  not  with 
metaphysics,  to  which  the  solution  of  this  ontological 
problem  properly  belongs,  yet  the  problem  of  the  ^' ought 
to  be"  versus  the  ''is"  is  so  closely  inwrought  with  re- 
ligious experience  that  at  bottom  this  whole  paper  is  in- 
evitably an  attempt  to  answer  this  deep  question.  In 
the  days  of  old,  the  answer  seemed  easy,  for  then  the  gods 
came  into  close  touch  with  men.  When  man  believed  in 
the  divinity  of  the  powers  of  nature  or  of  animal  kind  and 
ancestral  spirits,  when  God  appeared  in  the  storm  clouds, 
and  in  the  burning  bush ;  when  he  revealed  his  presence  in 
the  sacrifice  at  the  sacred  stone  or  grove,  as  in  the  contest 
between  Elijah  and  the  priests  of  Baal ;  when  he  spoke  to 
the  seers  in  dreams  and  hallucinations  and  to  the  diviners 
in  strange  coincidences  and  unusual  occm-rences  of  nature  ; 
when  magic  spells  and  incantations  brought  rain  and  sun- 
shine for  the  crops,  and  won  the  divine  powers  to  dispel 
disease  and  destroy  enemies,  —  then  the  divine  was  veri- 
fied to  the  senses  and  man  was  satisfied  and,  intellectually 
at  least,  at  peace  —  for  this  was  to  primitive  man  a  form 
of  scientific  verification. 

But  modern  science  with  its  insistence  on  an  unvarying 
order  and  unchangeable  law  has  done  away  with  the 
possibility  of  miraculous  intervention  in  the  world  of 
natural  phenomena. 

''When  Israel  of  the  Lord  beloved 
Out  of  the  land  of  bondage  came, 
His  father's  God  before  him  moved, 
An  awful  guide  in  smoke  and  flame. 

"  By  day  along  the  astonished  lands, 
The  cloudy  pillar  glided  slow ; 
By  night  Arabia's  crimson  sands 
Returned  the  fiery  column's  glow. 

"  Then  rose  the  choral  hymn  of  praise 
And  trump  and  timbal  answered  keen, 
And  Zion's  daughters  pour'd  their  lays 
With  Priests'  and  warrior's  voice  between. 


32  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

"  No  portents  now  our  foes  amaze. 
Forsaken,  Israel  wanders  lone ; 
Our  fathers  would  not  know  Thy  ways 
And  Thou  hast  left  them  to  their  own." 

Nor,  indeed,  is  an  ethical  religion  interested  in  such  signs 
and  wonders.  A  spiritual  religion  must  seek  for  the  veri- 
fication of  God's  presence  in  the  hearts  of  men  and  in 
their  deeds  of  love  and  righteousness. 

But  this  brings  us  back  to  morality  and  the  cycle  of 
thought  already  considered.  The  important  distinction 
between  religion  and  morality  appears  to  be  this :  The  goal 
of  perfection  which  morality  seeks  is  infinitely  removed 
—  it  may  be  only  ideal,  while  religion  holds  that  it  is  —  is 
now  and  always  realized.  If  anywhere  realized,  however, 
a  spiritual  ideal  must  appear  in  human  lives,  but  where  in 
finite  experience  is  an  infinite  and  perfect  love  and  absolute 
holiness  realized?  In  the  great  personalities?  In  the 
civilizing  hero?  the  inspired  priest?  the  righteous  ruler 
or  king?  the  self -renouncing  saint?  In  the  prototype 
and  pattern  ?  In  the  eternal  Christ  ?  In  the  moral  ideal  ? 
If  so  it  is  an  ideal  in  men's  minds,  but  nowhere  attained 
here  below.  How  then  actual  and  real  ?  Is  the  religious 
ideal,  in  short,  more  than  a  subjective  dream,  a  vision  of 
the  night,  an  illusion  which  will  finally  pass  away  when 
science  shall  have  completely  come  to  its  own? 

And  if  the  religious  ideal  is  not  realized  in  human  life, 
where,  then,  can  we  find  it?  Surely  not  in  the  physical 
world,  for  dear  and  beautiful  as  again  and  again  mother 
nature  may  appear  to  some  individual  among  her  children, 
when  we  consider  the  natural  system  as  a  whole,  we  have 
to  admit  that,  if  not  cruel,  it  is  at  least  indifferent  to  man's 
moral  ideal  and  to  his  dearest  hopes.  The  rain  and  the 
sunshine  fall  ahke  on  the  evil  and  the  good;  tempests 
and  earthquakes,  fires  and  floods,  strike  equally  the  vir- 
tuous and  the  guilty.  Man  looks  out  upon  the  world, 
as  Gotama  did,  and  beholds  everywhere  in  the  natural 
order,  ignorance,  disease,  old  age,  and  death,  —  or,  as  the 


THE    PROBLEM   OF  RELIGIOUS   IDEALISM  33 

Psalmist  who  saw  the  wicked  flourishing  like  a  green  bay 
tree  and  the  just  man  begging  his  bread.  And  who  can 
picture  to  himself,  without  a  pang  at  the  heart,  the  piteous 
suffering  of  innocent  and  helpless  animals.^  No,  not  in 
the  natural  order  of  the  universe,  nor  in  the  natiu*al  life 
of  man,  is  the  religious  ideal  realized.  The  natural  order 
is  indifferent. 

"So  let  the  stricken  deer  go  weep, 
The  Hart  ungalled  play, 
For  some  must  watch  while  some  must  sleep. 
Thus  runs  the  world  away." 

And  so,  again  and  again  in  agony  and  bloody  sweat 
men  have  prayed  to  whatever  powers  there  be,  that  the 
cup  of  sorrow  might  be  removed,  and  this  whole  sorry 
scheme  of  things  changed  and  moulded  nearer  to  the  heart's 
desire.  We  must  conclude  that  it  is  very  difficult  to  see 
in  the  natural  order  as  it  is  a  revelation  of  the  divine. 

Nor  is  the  religious-moral  ideal  realized  in  the  organized 
life  of  society.  For  where  in  human  institutions  do  we 
find  the  expression  of  perfect  love,  of  righteousness,  and  of 
social  justice?  Only  here  and  there  in  some  individual 
life  is  the  ideal  in  a  measure  attained,  and  this  finite  in- 
dividual lives  a  natural  life,  and  before  he  is  able  to  trans- 
form the  life  of  the  community,  he  perishes  from  the  earth 
like  the  flower  of  the  field ;  often,  indeed,  as  a  martyr  to 
the  ideal  at  the  hands  of  society  itself.  Only  the  ideal  as 
ideal  Uves  in  the  mind  and  heart  of  man,  forever  changing, 

1 "  High  above  the  woods  some  startled  pigeons  were  wheeling.  No 
other  life  in  sight ;  but  a  gleam  of  sunlight  stole  down  the  side  of  the 
covert  and  laid  a  burnish  on  the  turned  leaves,  till  the  whole  wood 
seemed  quivering  with  magic.  Out  of  that  quivering  wood  a  wounded 
rabbit  stole  into  the  open  to  die.  It  lay  down  on  its  side  on  the  slope 
of  a  tussock  of  grass,  its  hind  legs  drawn  uuder  it,  its  fore  legs  raised 
like  the  hands  of  a  praying  child.  Motionless  as  death,  all  its  re- 
maining life  was  centered  in  its  black  soft  eyes.  Uncomplaining, 
unknowing,  with  that  poor  soft  wandering  eye,  it  was  going  back  to 
mother  earth." 

(**  The  Country  House,"  John  Galsworthy.) 

D 


34  THE   DEAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

forever  unfulfilled ;  and  man  himself  with  his  ideals  shall 
some  day  perish  and  not  a  wrack  be  left  behind.  So  we 
seem  to  have  reached  the  position  of  Nietzsche's  Zara- 
thustra,  who,  hearing  the  old  saint  praising  God  in  the 
forest,  said  :  '^  Can  it  be  possible  that  this  old  saint  has  not 
yet  heard  aught  of  God  being  dead.  .  .  .  This  world  is 
the  ever  imperfect  image  of  an  eternal  contradiction  .  .  . 
alas  brethren  that  God  whom  I  created  was  man's  work 
and  man's  madness  like  all  Gods." 

Yet  himaan  needs  remain,  and  the  passionate  cry  of  the 
heart  will  not  be  stilled.  If  the  universe  is  in  the  hands  of 
a  perfectly  good  Being,  then  all  else  can  be  borne.  But 
if  God  exists,  then,  somehow,  surely  he  must  manifest 
himself.  In  some  manner  he  must  appear  to  his  worship- 
pers. But  where  and  how?  Such  a  question  admits  of 
no  offhand  reply.  It  is  really  bound  up  with  the  prob- 
lem of  the  ultimate  constitution  of  the  universe. 

To  summarize  our  results  so  far :  Religious  experience 
demands  the  reaUty  of  its  object.  But  if  there  be  a  God, 
then,  in  some  way,  he  must  make  his  presence  known. 
In  primitive  times  either  the  supernatural  was  verified  to 
the  senses  in  natural  phenomena  by  the  appearance  of  the 
deity  at  the  local  sanctuary,  or  in  the  activities  of  an 
inspired  individual ;  or,  as  in  Vedic  hymns,  —  when  with 
an  amulet  and  with  recitation  of  the  magic  formula  men 
sought  to  win  the  gods,  —  if  the  charm  works,  if  the 
misfortune  is  done  away,  or  blessing  comes,  then  some 
friendly  supernatural  power  has  surely  come  to  man's 
aid. 

And  even  to-day,  men  believe  in  miracles  and  seek  for 
verification  to  the  senses  of  divinity.  To  the  devout 
CathoHc,  the  real  presence  is  in  the  bread  and  wine,  and 
the  Protestant  still  prays  for  rain.  But  the  presupposi- 
tion of  science  is  an  ordered  universe.  Miracles  are  a 
weak  prop  for  religious  faith,  if  by  miracle  is  meant  a 
supernatural  event  which  causes  results  in  the  physical 
world,  and  which  takes  its  place  in  the  chain  of  phenomena. 


THE    PROBLEM   OF   RELIGIOUS   IDEALISM  35 

There  are  doubtless  many  unexplained  events.  These 
events  belong  to  the  sphere  of  man's  ignorance.  But  they 
cannot  be  miraculous^  i.e,  they  cannot  enter  the  phe- 
nomenal world,  and  in  principle  contradict  the  funda- 
mental ground  of  such  a  world's  existence.  If  such 
events  enter  the  chain  of  phenomena,  then  there  is  some 
order  which  can  explain  their  relation  to  other  events  and 
phenomena,  and  some  law  which  can  summarize  this  re- 
lation, although  this  order  and  this  law  may  not  be  defined 
by  any  hypothesis  so  far  set  forth. 

An  ethical,  spiritual  religion,  however,  is  little  interested 
in  signs  and  wonders.  It  looks  for  the  realization  of  an 
absolute  ideal  in  the  human,  moral  order.  The  nearest 
approach  to  this  realization  it  finds  in  certain  exceptional 
individuals  like  Sakya  Muni  and  Jesus.  But  the  records 
show  that  these  were  men  amongst  other  men  (and  if 
they  were  not,  it  is  to  return  once  more  to  the  world 
of  signs  and  wonders).  But  an  absolute  ideal  cannot 
be  identified  with  any  one  finite  human  being,  and  even 
if  it  could  be,  —  since  these  exceptional  persons  were 
perfect  as  far  as  we  can  judge,  —  it  would  give  us  no 
ground  for  believing  that  the  ideal  was  eternally  and  per- 
manently realized.  If,  however,  we  mean  by  ^^God" 
simply  an  ideal  in  men's  minds  like  the  conception  of 
'Hhe  eternal  Christ"  of  the  church  —  then  the  same 
problem  returns:  How  is  the  divine  made  actual  —  for 
this  ideal  in  men's  minds  is  constantly  changing.  We 
are  not  sure  that  it  is  growing  spiritually,  or  will  con- 
tinue to  do  so.  We  want  to  know  that  God  is  living 
now,  eternal  and  permanent,  and  that  he  supports  our 
ethical  ideals  and  our  deepest  purposes.  But  from  this 
point  of  view  (i.e.  of  subjective  idealism),  God  becomes  an 
unattainable  ideal,  and  how  can  such  a  God  be  in  touch 
with  man?  Can  he  hear  man's  prayers  or  help  him  as 
the  gods  of  old  helped  their  worshippers  ?  ^ 

1  Here  a  new  religious  opposition  appears  on  the  horizon  which  we 
shall  consider  in  detail  later  on ;  i.e.  in  this  phase  of  our  question,  the 


36  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

The  fundamental  distinction  between  religion  and 
morality  is  that  religion  holds  that  the  absolute  ideal  is 
an  actual  experience.  God  is  in  touch  with  —  communes 
with  —  man,  and  the  order  of  the  world  is  at  heart  divine. 
And,  yet,  because  of  the  critical,  reflective  consciousness 
of  the  modern  day  we  cannot  find  God  as  did  the  men  of 
old.  Thus,  often,  the  modern  attitude  is  one  of  subjective 
idealism.  As  Swinburne  has  expressed  it:  — 
"Save  his  own  soul,  he  has  no  star." 

Yet  we  are  not  really  satisfied  to  be  agnostics,  and  still 
comes  the  passionate  cry  of  the  heart :  — 

"O  that  I  knew  where  I  might  find  Him  I " 

Because  of  the  failure  to  find  God  either  in  the  natural 
order  or  in  the  moral  life  of  men,  the  world  has  turned  to 
mysticism.  This  turning  seems  to  be  a  recurrent  phe- 
nomenon.^ It  appears  strikingly  during  the  latter  days  of 
the  Roman  RepubUc  and  the  period  immediately  pre- 
ceding Christianity.^  At  that  time  when  the  ancient  reli- 
gions of  Greece  and  Rome  were  passing  away,  when 
moraUty  seemed  about  to  vanish  and  superstition,  oppres- 
sion, and  injustice  were  abroad,  men  sought  to  come 
into  immediate  contact  with  the  divine  through  the 
various  Oriental  cults  —  cults  such  as  that  of  the  Great 
Mother,  of  Isis,  and  Seraphis,  and  of  Mithra.  These 
mystery  religions  with  their  secret  initiations,  their  rites 
of  purification,  their  myths  and  stories  of  divine  love  and 
sorrow,  and  their  promise  of  immortality  made  an  appeal 
to  the  emotional  nature  which  men  had  not  found  in  the 
Graeco-Roman  rehgions,  and  brought  to  a  world  lost  in  sin 
and  disillusioned,  healing,  the  promise  of  redemption,  and 

underlying,  logical  problem  arises  in  respect  of  the  paradox  of  the 
static  and  the  dynamic,  the  permanent  and  the  changing,  in  religion, 
and  how  to  reconcile  these  two  phases  of  religious  experience. 

^To-day,  in  the  autumn  of  1914,  men  are  prophesying  that  when 
"the  great  war"  is  over  there  will  follow  a  revival  of  rehgion;  and  it 
has  been  said  that  this  religious  revival  will  take  a  mystical  form. 

2 See  S.  Dill,  "Roman  Society,"  Vol.  I. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  RELIGIOUS   IDEALISM  37 

a  great  hope  —  the  hope  "that  this  poor  struggling  in- 
effectual life  should  not  close  at  death." 

And  so  again  to-day,  as  a  natural  reaction  against  the 
scepticism,  scientific  rationalism,  and  evolutionary  ma- 
terialism of  the  last  part  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the 
heart  once  more  asserts  itself  as  in  "  In  Memoriam  "  — 

"  And  like  a  man  in  wrath  the  heart 
Stood  up  and  answered  —  'I  have  felt,' " 

and  this  revolt  of  the  heart  finds  expression  in  the  New 
Thought  Movement,  in  Christian  Science,  and  other  forms 
of  religious  mysticism  of  the  day.  Mysticism  as  the  es- 
sence of  religion  is  the  position  taken  in  that  notable  book 
which  has  done  so  much  to  reawaken  an  interest  in  the 
psychology  of  rehgion,  the  "Varieties  of  Religious  Ex- 
perience'' of  William  James.  In  spite  of  the  verdict  of 
science  and  of  the  logical  understanding,  in  the  deeper 
reaches  of  the  human  consciousness  —  in  the  world  of 
the  "subliminal  self,"  'tis  said  God  appears  to  man,  and 
this  immediate  experience  itself  cannot  be  doubted. 

Here,  then,  in  the  world  of  pure  experience  we  seem 
to  have  found  reality  itself.  Our  day  emphasizes  the 
psychical.  The  properties  of  matter  —  color,  sound,  form, 
weight,  space-characters,  and  the  rest  —  can  all  be  dis- 
solved into  elements  of  sensation.  There  are  no  such 
things  as  "material"  atoms.  The  "psychical"  has  dis- 
placed the  old  materialism.  But  experience  itself  is  real ; 
we  cannot  get  back  of  that  and  outside  it.  Religious 
mysticism  is  at  home  in  this  world  of  psychic  reaUty.  In 
the  depths  of  his  own  immediate  experience,  then,  man 
comes  into  touch  with  the  divine. 

But  no  sooner  is  this  position  attained  than  the  critical 
world-spirit  returns  with  its  relentless  questionings. 
Granted  that  the  bugaboo  of  scientific  materiaUsm  has 
been  driven  away  or  dissolved  in  the  reality  of  immediate 
sensational  experience,  yet  in  pan-psychicism  and  mys- 
ticism what  value  is  there  ?  —  what  hope  for  the  reahzation 


38  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

of  man's  dreams  ?  —  for  the  actuality  of  his  vision  of  the 
ideal?  For  what  have  we,  after  all,  in  psychical  experi- 
ence but  the  ceaseless  vibration  of  pulses,  momentary  sen- 
sations which  come  in  a  flash  and  are  gone  —  a  Heraclitean 
world  of  eternal  mutabiUty  ?  The  outcome  is  that  as  pure 
experience  reality  is  reduced  to  a  changing  experience,  an 
ebb  and  flow  without  permanence,  significance,  or  value. 

If  the  mystic  declares  that  in  his  heart  of  hearts  he 
has  had  a  revelation  of  divinity,^  —  that  the  moral  law  was 
not  written  once  by  the  finger  of  God  on  tables  of  stone 
and  given  to  the  prophet  on  the  sacred  heights  of  Mt. 
Sinai  amid  lightnings  and  smoke  and  quakings  of  the  holy 
mountain,  while  the  waiting  people  trembled,  —  but  that 
in  his  own  immediate  experience  divinity  has  passed  by, 
and  spoken  to  him,  and  written  the  law  on  his  heart,  — 
what  have  we,  after  all,  but  an  individual  experience,  a 
revelation  of  moral  law  which  is  of  value  only  to  the  in- 
dividual ?  Experience  shows  that  there  have  been  a  great 
variety  of  interpretations  of  such  an  immediate,  moral  con-« 
sciousness.  Pure  experience,  then,  after  all  gives  no  uni- 
versal moral  revelation,  nor  any  warrant  that  there  is  any 
absolute  support  in  the  universe  for  our  ethical  ideals,  or 
that  the  best  is  permanent,  or  the  '^good^'  also  the  ^Hrue/' 
And,  further,  mystical  experience  is  not  able  to  interpret 
all  actual  forms  of  rehgious  experience,  —  not  those  of  a 
social  type,  —  and  we  have  seen  that  primitive  rehgion 
was  primarily  social,  and  we  can  hardly  eliminate  from 
religious  experience  the  social  forms  which  survive  to-day. 

We  found  the  ground  of  human,  rehgious  experience  in 
the  essential  ideahty  of  man's  nature.  Man  creates  an 
ideal  world.  But  religious  experience  claims  that  this 
ideal  world  is  also  actual  and  real.  It  beheves  the  unseen 
eternally  is. 

Yet  our  brief  review  of  some  of  the  phases  of  rehgious 
experience  has  left  us  in  a  position  of  more  or  less  un- 
certainty and  doubt  regarding  the  reahty  of  the  rehgious 

1  See  the  account  of  mystic  experiences  in  James's  book. 


THE   PEOBLEM   OF  RELIGIOUS   IDEALISM  39 

ideal ;  that  is,  in  the  sense  of  its  realization  in  the  actual 
universe,  and  not  merely  as  a  subjective  dream  or  illu- 
sion. Yet  one  result  we  have  reached.  We  cannot 
doubt  or  deny  that  there  has  been  such  a  thing  as  religious 
experience  itself,  whether  or  no  this  experience  signifies 
all  that  it  is  held  to  mean  of  God  and  of  ultimate  value. 
It  may  be  that  in  some  other  way  than  those  ways  which 
we  have  thus  far  briefly  considered,  the  ideal  is  made  con- 
crete, the  divine  verified,  and  God  is  in  touch  with  man. 
In  our  perplexity  our  best  course  would  seem  to  be  to 
start  with  the  reality  which  we  know,  and  to  institute  an 
examination  of  some  of  these  concrete  experiences  them- 
selves ;  to  gather  up,  so  to  speak,  the  elements  which  they 
yield,  to  discover  first  of  all  which  of  these  elements  are 
universal,  and  secondly,  in  what  sense,  if  any,  actual  re- 
Kgious  experience  is  a  revelation  of  God  to  the  world.^ 

1  At  this  point  I  Jiave  naturally  to  assume  my  own  investigation  of 
prayers,  hymns,  poems,  and  other  records  of  religious  experience. 
Many  of  these  will  be  used  as  illustrations  in  what  follows. 


"  O  liebe  fliichtige  Seele 
Dir  ist  so  bang  und  weh !  " 

—  Heine. 


CHAPTER  II 
The  Universal  Elements  of  Religious  Experience 

The  reflections  of  the  foregoing  chapter  led  us  to  a 
brief  consideration  of  two  phases,  as  they  may  be  called, 
of  religious  experience.  Ideality,  we  saw,  is  the  heart  and 
soul  of  religious  experience,  and  yet  this  ideality,  if  it  is  to 
be  objective  and  a  character  of  reality,  must  bear  also  the 
quality  of  immediacy.  Ideality  and  immediacy,  there- 
fore, are  the  two  wings  of  religion  by  which  it  rises  into 
light  and  life  and  becomes  a  thing  at  once  of  human  and 
eternal  value. 

But  the  conclusion  of  the  chapter  left  us  in  doubt  as  to 
whether  these  two  phases  of  religious  experience  could  be 
unified,  and  if  so  in  what  way  the  reconciliation  could  be 
effected.  It  is  true  the  religious  ideal  we  have,  but  is  it 
more  than  a  subjective  ideal?  Again,  'Hhe  immediate" 
we  have,  but  has  it  any  spiritual  worth  and  value  ?  Such 
is  the  position  to  which  we  were  brought  at  the  close  of 
the  chapter. 

In  other  words,  in  a  spiritually  developed  religion,  God 
becomes  man's  highest  ideal,  and  his  life  in  relation  to 
(union  with,  communion  with)  God  —  or  salvation  —  his 
supreme  end. 

The  fundamental  question  for  religious  experience  then 
is :    Does  God  exist,  and  is  salvation  possible  ? 

Leaving  this  great  question  in  abeyance  for  the  moment, 
we  turned  in  our  perplexity  to  an  analysis  of  such  concrete 
religious  experience  as  we  have  in  order  to  discover  afresh 
the  elements  and  the  essential  nature  of  this  experience. 

We  have,  then,  as  a  starting  point,  the  fact  of  concrete 
religious  experience,  and  we  find  that  this  experience  when 

41 


42  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

analyzed  implies  the  ideality  of  religion  —  i.e,  religious 
experience,  whatever  else  it  is,  is  an  aspiration,  a  longing 
for  an  invisible  goal,  for  an  ideal  good  —  and,  for  spiritual 
religion,  an  ^^ ought  to  be,''  —  and,  further,  religious  faith 
holds  that  this  invisible  good,  this  supernatural  world,  exists 
and  may  be  attained  (by  right  rules  and  practices  —  magic 
— prayers — meditations,  rituals,  ceremonies,  moral  actions, 
renunciation,  social  service,  etc.).  Out  of  'the  fact  of  the 
ideality  of  religion,  then,  we  get  the  first  contrast  and  op- 
position of  religious  experience,  and  from  the  faith  that  this 
opposition  may  be  overcome  appears  the  bond  which  unites 
the  elements  of  the  opposition  in  one  whole  of  experience. 
Hence  the  universal  form  of  religious  experience  is  a 
triadic  relation,  and  its  universal  elements  — 

(1)  The  present  state  which  is  restless,  incomplete,  un- 
satisfactory, and  relatively  at  least,  evil  —  or  a  state  of  sin. 

(2)  Over  against  this  —  the  longed-for,  invisible  state  — 
an  unseen  world  which  is  good,  satisfaction,  peace,  fulfill- 
ment, etc. 

(3)  The  bond  or  process  —  a  way  of  life,  of  attainment, 
of  passing  from  the  evil  to  the  good  —  and  also  from  the 
good  to  the  evil  —  the  infinite  to  the  finite,  the  divine  to 
the  human  —  for  the  process  is  a  reciprocal  one  —  a 
longing  and  a  response,  a  seeking  and  a  bestowing. 

"O  that  I  knew  where  I  might  find  Him  "  — 
"If  ye  seek  me  truly,  ye  shall  find  me  "  — 
"Ask  and  it  shall  be  given  you." 

So  much  for  a  very  general  expression  of  the  universal 
elements  of  religious  experience.  Concretely,  of  course, 
they  take  a  great  variety  of  forms. 

We  saw  in  the  opening  chapter  that,  granted  the  ideality 
of  religion,  it  follows  that  certain  propositions  are  true.  I 
want  to  speak  a  little  more  in  detail  of  these  deductions 
from  religious  ideality.  If  they  are  true,  then  some  groups 
of  experiences  seem  to  be  eliminated  from  the  field  of  re- 
ligious experience.  For  example,  first,  we  must  eliminate 
that  whole  group  of  experience  which  can  be  classed  as 


I 


UNIVERSAL   ELEMENTS   OF   RELIGIOUS   EXPERIENCE      43 

purely  immediate  states  of  experience.  We  must  eliminate 
Epicureanism  in  its  refined  as  well  as  in  its  more  sensual 
forms.  The  goal  of  religious  experience  will  not  be  the 
Arabian  paradise,  nor  the  attainment  of  distinction,  ele- 
gance, and  refined  taste  of  certain  forms  of  modern  cul- 
ture. Greek  Epicureanism  was  a  philosophy,  not  a  reli- 
gion. The  disciple  of  Epicurus  saw  life  as  a  series  of  impres- 
sions, a  Heraclitean  flux.  Yet  he  sought,  as  all  men  do,  for 
something  permanent,  something  real  and  of  value  — 
and  he  found  the  concrete  experience  of  the  moment  — ■ 

"A  moment's  Halt  —  a  momentary  taste 
Of  Being  from  the  well  amid  the  Waste, 
And  lo,  the  phantom  caravan  has  reached 
The  Nothing  it  set  out  from  —  Oh,  make  haste ! " 

If  living  reality  is  just  the  moment  of  experience  be- 
tween a  past  which  is  no  more,  and  a  future  which  perhaps 
may  never  be  at  all,  then  let  us  make  the  most  of  the  mo- 
ment which  is  ours  and  drain  the  cup  of  life  to  the  dregs  — 

"Ah,  my  Beloved,  fill  the  Cup  that  clears 
To-day  of  past  Regrets  and  future  Fears. 
To-morrow !  —  Why,  To-morrow  I  may  be 
Myself  with  Yesterday's  Sev'n  thousand  Years." 

In  its  more  refined  form,  as  the  doctrine  of  culture, 
an  interesting  expression  of  this  type  of  experience  is  given 
in  Pater's  ^'Marius,  the  Epicurean.''  The  moment's  ex- 
perience is  concrete,  direct.  Be  perfect  to  what  is  ''here 
and  now."  Aim  for  the  perfection  of  all  powers  of  sen- 
sation,  perception,   intelligence,  and  emotion. 

We  saw  in  the  opening  chapter  that  religion  could  not 
be  identified  with  mere  morality.  The  question  which 
confronts  us  now  is  —  how  far  religious  experience  can  be 
identified  with  aesthetic  emotion. 

Greek  Epicureanism  was  a  philosophy,  not  a  religion, 
but  in  our  day  there  is  a  tendency  not  only  to  substitute 
the  delight  of  aesthetic  experience  for  rehgion,  but  even 
to  identify  the  two  —  and  to  say  religion  is  simply  aesthetic 
experience.     But  in  so  far  as  aesthetic  experience  can  be 


44  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE^ 

defined  in  terms  of  immediate  satisfaction,  this  experience 
cannot  constitute  the  whole  of,  or  the  essence  of,  reUgious 
experience.  And  this  further  raises  the  question  how  far 
Mysticism  in  its  pure  form  is  a  satisfactory  expression  of 
reHgious  experience. 

We  saw  in  the  preceding  chapter  that  the  mystic  ex- 
perience is  an  individual  experience,  that  each  individual 
must  find  it  and  experience  it  for  himself,  —  and  we  saw 
further  that  no  purely  individual  experience  could  be  a 
warrant  of  the  universal  truth  of  the  experience.  Im- 
mediate experience  is  an  individual  affair.  Then  man  — 
the  individual  simply  —  would  be  the  measure  of  all 
things,  and  from  this  immediacy  no  universal  standard 
could  be  derived.  Also  it  was  suggested  that  life  shows 
other  forms  of  religious  experience  —  viz.  such  as  we  find 
in  social  religious  types.  We  have  now  to  raise  the 
further  question  whether  mystic  experience  as  merely 
immediate  is  reUgion  at  all.  To  the  mystic  this  experi- 
ence is  a  real  and  thrilling  experience.  He  seems  to  see 
more  into  the  depths  of  reality.  New  meanings  flash 
upon  him,  new  powers  are  quickened  within  him,  and  his 
whole  being  rises  up  in  response  to  the  new  insight.  No 
wonder  that  he  fancies  that  in  this  experience  he  has 

come  — 

"on  that  which  is 
And  caught  the  deep  pulsations  of  the  world." 

For  him  there  is  no  need  of  any  ^' other'*  —  there  is  no 
"beyond."  This  is  bliss,  —  this  is  peace,  —  this  is  en- 
lightenment, —  this  is  reality,  —  this  is  God. 

But  in  this  experience  what  has  become  of  the  ideality 
of  religion  ?  If  the  answer  is  that  reUgious  experience  is  a* 
finding  as  well  as  a  seeking,  a  response  as  well  as  a  prayer, 
a  satisfaction  as  well  as  a  longing  and  striving,  still  we  have 
to  ask  whether  this  immediate  consciousness  of  a  finite 
individual  (which  varies  from  one  individual  to  another 
and  even  in  the  individual  himself  from  moment  to  mo- 
ment) can  constitute  the  complete  state  which  is  the  goal  of 


UNIVERSAL  ELEMENTS   OF  RELIGIOUS   EXPERIENCE      45 

religious  ideality?  We  should  have,  in  any  case,  to  aban- 
don our  search  for  universal  elements  in  reUgious  experi- 
ence, for  my  immediate  experience  is  not  yours  or  an- 
other's ;  it  is  just  my  own  and  unique.  The  immediate 
in  itself  is  not  religion. 

In  the  second  place,  we  have,  I  think,  to  eliminate  from 
the  sphere  of  religion  that  group  of  experiences  which  em- 
phasizes the  value  of  the  ^'natural"  man  and  of  a  purely 
^'natural"  development  in  the  evolutionary  sense  of  the 
word,  because  religious  experience  implies  a  ^transfor- 
mation'' in  relation  to  an  ideal,  —  a  conscious  self- 
consecration  such  as  took  place  in  the  knight  of  mediaeval 
days  as  he  kept  vigil  over  his  arms  in  the  sanctuary.  The 
above,  however,  is  not  meant  to  imply  that  the  develop- 
ment of  instincts  and  impulses  to  a  higher  level  may  not 
take  place  gradually  and  unconsciously  in  a  religious  at- 
mosphere and  environment,  nor  that  the  transformation 
into  the  Ufe  of  the  spirit  must  be  necessarily  attended  by 
emotional  phenomena  such  as  accompany  '^religious  con- 
version" in  the  technical  use  of  this  expression;  but  it 
does  mean  that  at  last  that  which  is  highest  to  the  indi- 
vidual, the  conscious  relation  of  the  soul  to  God,  must  be 
consciously  chosen  and  pursued  by  him  in  such  wise  as  to 
control  and  transform  his  natural  instincts  and  impulses 
through  the  dedication  of  them  to  the  service  of  his  ideal 
end.  As  a  result  we  conclude  that  the  ''outgoing  of 
energy,"  or  "vital  force"  are  not  good  expressions  for  the 
rehgious  experience.  ReHgious  experience  cannot  be  thus 
captured  and  its  practical  value  transferred  to  other  fields 
and  made  use  of  there  while  that  which  constitutes  its 
essence  is  thrown  on  one  side.^  Our  result  impUes  further 
that  not  everything  can  be  done  by  the  environment  or 
''Nature,"  and  so  eliminates  from  the  field  of  rehgion 
proper  that "  scientific  culture  "  and  those  social  movements 
which  lay  stress  on  the  external  factors  of  the  '^environment/^ 
and  which,  while  they  are  good  in  themselves,  are  not  re- 

1  See  Professor  Carver :  "A  Religion  Worth  Having." 


46  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

ligious  in  the  true  sense  of  the  term.  For  religion,  poverty 
is  not  the  ^' cause  of  sin/'  nor  psycho-therapeutics,  which 
possibly  banishes  nervous  indigestion  and  headache  and 
other  such  ills,  —  the  ^^cure"  of  moral  evil.  In  a  word,  I 
should  say  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  ^'rehgion  of  science." 

For,  for  the  ^^new  life"  (transformed  life)  of  rehgion 
that  distinction  holds  which  was  described  by  Saint  Paul 
as  the  distinction  between  the  natural  man  and  the  spir- 
itual man ;  by  the  Stoics  as  the  distinction  between  the 
life  contrary  to  Nature  and  the  life  in  accord  with  Reason 
—  (as  used  by  Marcus  Aurehus  where  Nature  and  Reason 
are  identified) ;  the  distinction  of  Buddhism  between 
the  transitory  life  full  of  ignorance  and  misery,  and  en- 
lightenment; the  distinction  of  the  two  wills  of  Saint 
Augustine;  of  this  world  and  the  next,  or  ^' world  to 
come,"  of  early  Christianity.  In  the  words  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel,  ^^  Except  ye  be  born  again,  ye  cannot  enter  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven."  This  is  what  one  means  by  the 
religious  life. 

And  this  is  the  real  or  eternal  significance  of  the  Christ- 
mas birth  story  —  as  it  has  been  expressed,  for  example,  in 
the  hymn  of  Phillips  Brooks :  — 

''0  holy  Child  of  Bethlehem, 
Descend  to  us,  we  pray ; 
Cast  out  our  sin  and  enter  in ;    " 
Be  bom  in  us  to-day. 

"We  hear  the  Christmas  angels 
The  great  glad  tidings  tell. 
0  come  to  us,  abide  with  us, 
Our  Lord  Emmanuel." 

The  two  views  thus  far  considered  and  rejected,  while 
they  appear  to  represent  opposite  issues,  —  the  one  la3dng 
stress  on  the  value  of  the  moment,  because,  like  the  water 
of  a  stream,  life  passes  away  and  is  no  more ;  the  other 
emphasizing  the  value  of  the  passing  life  as  a  whole,  in  its 
natural  change  and  unfolding,  —  these  two  views  have 


UNIVERSAL   ELEMENTS   OF   RELIGIOUS   EXPERIENCE      47 

really,  fundamentally,  the  same  starting  point,  viz.  the 
value  of  the  purely  natural  life  —  the  life,  that  is,  of  in- 
stinct, impulse,  sensation,  perception,  or,  even  if  on  a 
higher  plane,  the  life  of  natural  affection  and  social  ten- 
dencies, and  natural  intelligence.  But  from  our  starting 
point  of  the  essential  ideality  of  religion,  neither  the  theory 
which  emphasizes  the  value  of  the  ^^here  and  now,''  nor 
that  which  finds  its  value  in  "liie^^  itself  in  its  whole  nat- 
ural development,  properly  defines  the  religious  experi- 
ence ;  and  taking  these  theories  together  as  in  principle 
one  —  it  is,  I  think,  this  attitude  towards  life  and 
reality  which  runs  as  a  subtle  poison  through  so  much  of 
our  modern  literature  and  makes  its  influence  dangerous. 
For  this  view  finds  in  the  first  place  man  organically  one 
with  nature,  —  the  cosmic  process  working  in  and  through 
him,  —  and  in  the  second  place  it  finds  this  cosmic  pro- 
cess is  what  it  is  —  it  is  natural  and  in  that  sense  good. 
Man  is,  therefore,  in  the  hands  of  impulses  which  he  can- 
not control.  The  true  life  of  man,  then,  is  the  life  of  the 
cosmic  process  within  him,  of  natural  impulses  as  they 
naturally  unfold  and  adapt  themselves  to  the  environ- 
ment. This  is  what  we  find  in  so  much  present-day 
Nietzscheism,  as  exemplified  by  Nietzsche's  followers,  in 
the  will  to  power  and  the  so-called  religion  of  the  Super- 
man. They  seem  not  to  have  heeded  the  warning  given 
in  the  watchword  of  their  Master  concerning  ^Hhe  trans- 
formation of  all  values."  These  views  which,  seeking  to 
do  away  with  other  worldliness,  emphasize  the  value  of 
the  "  immediate  "  of  natural  life,  either  in  part  or  in  its 
whole  natural  evolution,  as  if  it  were  all,  —  in  so  far  as 
they  are  consistent  in  reality  overthrow  the  spiritual  basis 
of  religion  and  abandon  religious  value  as  such. 

In  the  third  place  religious  experience  is  essentially  op- 
timistic. Religious  faith  holds  that  the  religious  ideal 
exists  and  may  be,  in  some  sense,  attained.  Yet  since  reli- 
gion implies  the  conscious  relation  to  an  unseen  good,  the 
very  fact  of  the  ideality  of  religion  makes  the  present  state 


48  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

of  experience  incomplete,  unsatisfactory,  and  in  so  far  tragic 
and  relatively  evil.  Hence  in  religious  experience,  in 
prayers,  hymns,  and  religious  biographies,  we  constantly 
find  expressed  the  sense  of  world- weariness  and  despair  of 
life  as,  e.g.,  in  the  Orphism  of  Euripides'  Bacchae.  Here  it 
is  the  longing  to  escape  from  the  irreligion,  sordid  ambition 
and  restless  striving  of  the  times,  from  'Hhe  worship  of 
the  Ruthless  Will,*'  to  the  mystic  joy  of  inspiration  in  the 
^'Muses'  land,  aiid  to  peace  in  acceptance  of  the  eternal 
nature-born  laws  of  God." 

"...  A  better  land  is  there 
Where  Oljmapus  charms  the  air, 
The  high  still  dell  where  the  Muses  dwell, 
Fairest  of  all  things  fair ! 

0  there  is  Grace  and  there  is  the  Hearths  Desire 
And  peace  to  adore  thee,  thou  Spirit  of  Grinding  Fire." 

"Happy  he  on  the  weary  sea, 
Who  hath  fled  the  tempest  and  won  the  haven ; 
Happy  whoso  hath  risen  free 
Above  his  strivings." 

"Oh,  feet  of  a  fawn  to  the  greenwood  fled, 
Alone  in  the  grass  and  the 
Leap  of  the  hunted  no  more  in  dread 
Beyond  the  mares  and  the  deadly  press." 

"Onward  yet  by  moor  and  glen 

To  the  clear  lone  lands  untroubled  of  men." 

(Translation  of  Sir  Gilbert  Murray.) 

In  Buddhism,  this  pessimistic  attitude  appears  as  the 
sense  of  the  mutability  and  the  transitoriness  of  life,  of 
the  darkness  of  its  ignorance  and  of  the  tragedy  of  death 
which  comes  to  all ;  or,  again,  it  is  a  sense  of  the  emptiness 
of  all  purely  human  things,  the  vanity  of  the  gifts  of  fickle 
fortune  and  of  earthly  fame  of  a  Marcus  Aurelius.  An- 
other example  of  world-weariness  and  despair  is  seen  in 
the  ^'Contemptus  Mundi"  of  the  mediaeval  monks,  in  the 
longing  to  escape  from  the  world  and  to  flee  away  to  the 


UNIVERSAL   ELEMENTS   OF   RELIGIOUS   EXPERIENCE      49 

idealism  and  serenity  of  the  inner  recesses  of  the  spirit,  or 
to  seek  out  some  retreat  of  peace, —  a  monk's  cell,  forest 
or  holy  mountain  —  where  the  refugee  from  the  vanity  of 
the  world  may  ponder  and  pray,  where  perhaps  he  may 
catch  a  vision  of  a  redeemed  world,  or  of  some  bliss  in 
the  heaven  of  the  hereafter.  I  give  a  few  illustrations 
of  this  experience  of  world- weariness  and  disillusionment. 

1.  From  Buddhism  —  The  Misery  of  existence,  of  birth 
and  re-birth:  — 

"What  misery  to  be  bom  again ! 
And  have  the  flesh  dissolve  at  death ! 

"Subject  to  birth,  old  age,  disease, 
Extinction  will  I  seek  to  find, 
Where  no  decay  is  ever  known, 
Nor  death,  but  all  serenity. 

"There  is,  there  must  be  an  escape! 
Impossible  there  should  not  be ! 
I'll  make  the  search  and  find  the  way 
Which  from  existence  shall  release !  " 

"Even  as  although  there  evil  is. 
That  which  is  good  is  also  found ; 
So  though  'tis  true  that  birth  exists. 
That  which  is  not  birth  should  be  lost." 
(Story  of  Sumedha  —  from  the  Jataka,  Warren's  translation.) 

2.  /From  the  Meditations  of  Marcus  Aurelius :  — 

"How  quickly  all  things  disappear,  in  the  universe  the  bodies 
themselves,  but  in  time  the  remembrance  of  them ;  what  is  the  nature 
of  all  sensible  things,  and  particularly  those  which  attract  with  the 
bait  of  pleasure  or  terrify  by  pain,  or  are  noised  abroad  by  vapory 
fame; 

"Of  human  life  the  time  is  a  point,  and  the  substance  is  in  a  flux, 
and  the  perception  dull  and  the  composition  of  the  whole  body  subject 
to  putrefaction,  and  the  soul  a  whirl,  and  fortune  hard  to  divine,  and 
fame  a  thing  dull  of  judgment.  And,  to  say  all  in  a  word,  everything 
which  belongs  to  the  body  is  a  stream,  and  what  belongs  to  the  soul 
is  a  dream  and  vapor,  and  life  is  a  warfare  and  a  stranger's  sojourn, 
and  after  fame  is  oblivion.  Some  things  are  emerging  into  existence, 
and  others  are  emerging  out  of  it ;   and  of  that  which  is  coming  into 


50  THE    DRAMA    OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

existence  part  is  already  extinguished.  In  this  flowing  stream,  then, 
in  which  there  is  no  abiding,  what  is  there  of  the  things  which  hurry 
by  on  which  a  man  would  set  a  high  price?  It  would  be  just  as  if  a 
man  should  fall  in  love  with  one  of  the  sparrows  which  fly  by,  but  it 
is  already  out  of  sight.  Something  of  this  kind  is  the  very  life  of 
every  man.     What  then  is  worth  being  valued  ? 

"Live  with  the  gods.  And  he  does  live  with  the  gods,  who  con- 
stantly shows  to  them  that  his  soul  is  satisfied  with  that  which  is 
assigned  to  him,  and  that  it  does  all  that  the  daemon  wishes,  which 
Zeus  has  given  to  every  man  for  his  guardian  and  guide,  a  portion  of 
himself.  And  this  is  every  man's  imderstanding  and  reason.  Men 
seek  retreats  for  themselves,  houses  in  the  country,  sea-shore,  and 
mountains,  and  thou  art  wont  to  desire  such  things  very  much.  But 
this  is  altogether  a  mark  of  the  most  common  sort  of  man,  for  it  is 
in  thy  power  whenever  thou  shalt  choose  to  retire  into  thyself.  For 
nowhere  either  with  more  quiet,  or  more  freedom  from  trouble  does  a 
man  retire  than  into  his  own  soul,  particularly  when  he  has  within  him 
such  thoughts  that  by  looking  into  them,  he  is  immediately  in  perfect 
tranquillity. '* 

The  best  proof,  perhaps,  that  the  incomplete,  unsatis- 
fied, tragic  consciousness  —  in  moral  terms  the  conscious- 
ness with  a  sense  of  sin  (James's  twice-born  men)  —  forms 
an  integral  element  in  the  religious  consciousness,  is  the 
fact  that  the  complete  consciousness  of  the  longed-for 
goal  is  (when  it  is  not  described  in  terms  of  the  sensuous 
imagination)  described  by  means  of  terms  which  express 
contrast  and  opposition  to  the  present  unsatisfied  state. 

For  example,  in  Buddhistic  accounts  of  Nirvana,  Nir- 
vana is  called  the  ^^ abode  of  bliss,"  of  ^^ peace,''  of  ''en- 
lightenment" in  contrast  to  the  misery  of  finite  existence, 
with  its  mutability,  its  pain,  its  turmoil,  and  its  ignorance. 
When  we  try  to  discover  what  positively  the  Nirvana 
experience  is,  logically  all  we  find  is  this  contrast  with 
and  negation  of  everything  which  finite  existence  is.  It 
is  the  world  beyond  our  present  existence  which  is  attained 
through  the  great  renunciation  of  this  world ;  or  through 
enlightenment  by  means  of  the  series  of  trances  of  which 
series  it  is  the  limit.  It  is  the  ''sorrowless  state,"  a  state 
of  ''incomparable  security."     "It  is  the  complete  ces- 


UNIVERSAL  ELEMENTS   OF   RELIGIOUS   EXPERIENCE      51 

sation  of  desire  —  a  losing  hold,  a  relinquishment/' 
Logically,  Nirvana  is  annihilation  —  is  nothingness.  For 
the  emotional,  religious  consciousness  it  remains  the  abode 
of  peace  and  bliss ;  but  positively  all  we  can  say  about  it 
is  that  it  is  the  goal  which  is  the  cessation  of  the  wheel  of 
existence  whose  roots  are  desire  and  ignorance  and  their 
consequences,  transitoriness,  sinfulness,  pain,  and  sorrow. 

"There  is,  O  disciples,  a  state,  where  there  is  neither  earth  nor 
water,  neither  light  nor  air,  neither  infinity  of  space,  nor  infinity  of 
reason,  nor  absolute  void,  nor  the  co-extinction  of  perception  and 
non-perception,  neither  this  world  nor  that  world,  both  sun  and  moon. 
That,  O  disciples,  I  term  neither  coming  nor  going  nor  standing, 
neither  death  nor  birth.  It  is  without  basis,  without  procession, 
without  cessation :  that  is  the  end  of  sorrow." 

(From  Urdana,  quoted  by  Oldenberg.) 

We  find  this  contrast  between  the  two  states  of  the  re- 
ligious consciousness  again  in  the  Hebrew  book  of  Psalms. 
Here  the  goal — the  ideal  good  which  is  sought — is  thought 
of  as  a  state  of  trust  in  God  and  as  a  perpetual  dwelling 
in  his  presence  through  righteousness  of  life,  or,  in  some 
cases,  of  ceremonial  purity,  and  of  help  and  strength 
coming  from  God  to  the  righteous  man.  By  contrast  the 
unsatisfied  or  bad  state  is  described  as  being  forsaken  of 
God  and  given  over  to  unrighteous  enemies.  Almost  any 
psalm  will  serve  as  an  illustration:  — 

"  I  will  love  thee,  O  Lord,  my  strength. 

"  The  Lord  is  my  rock,  and  my  fortress,  and  my  deliverer ;  my  Godj 
my  strength,  in  whom  I  will  trust ;  my  buckler  and  the  horn  of  my 
salvation,  and  my  high  tower. 

"  I  will  call  upon  the  Lord,  who  is  worthy  to  be  praised :  so  shall  I 
be  saved  from  mine  enemies. 

"  The  sorrows  of  death  compassed  me,  and  the  floods  of  ungodly 
men  made  me  afraid. 

"  The  sorrows  of  hell  compassed  me  about :  the  snares  of  death  pre- 
vented me. 

"  In  my  distress  I  called  upon  the  Lord,  and  cried  unto  my  God : 
he  heard  my  voice  out  of  his  temple,  and  my  cry  came  before  him, 
even  into  his  ears. 


52  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

"  As  for  God,  his  way  is  perfect :  the  word  of  the  Lord  is  tried :  he 
is  a  buckler  to  all  those  that  trust  in  him." 

(Psalm  18.) 
"My  God,  my  God,  why  hast  thou  forsaken  me?  .  .  . 
"  O  my  God,  I  cry  in  the  daytime,  but  thou  hearest  not ;  .  .  . 
"  But  thou  art  holy.  .  .  . 
"  Our  fathers  trusted  in  thee :  they  trusted,  and  thou  didst  deliver 

*^^^-"  (Psalm  22.) 

Compare  with  these  the  well-known  Twenty-third 
Psalm,  ^^The  Lord  is  my  Shepherd,''  and  the  Twenty- 
seventh  Psalm,  ^'The  Lord  is  my  light  and  my  salvation, 
whom  shall  I  fear?" 

Again,  we  find  the  contrast  of  the  two  states  in  the 
writings  of  the  Stoics  as  already  suggested;  although 
here  the  goal  seems  to  be  not  so  much  a  world  beyond  as 
a  world  within.  It  is  the  peace  of  the  resigned  and  heroic 
mind  —  ''The  city  of  men's  souls,"  as  Seneca  called  it. 

And  finally,  the  Christian  heaven,  when  it  is  not  defined 
in  sensuous  terms,  is  defined  by  means  of  a  series  of  con- 
trasts and  oppositions  to  the  present  type  of  existence. 
That  is  what  we  find  in  many  Christian  hymns.  The 
pattern  and  prototype  of  this  class  of  hymns  is  usually, 
as  to  their  form,  the  account  of  the  New  Jerusalem  in 
Revelation  21. 

"And  the  city  had  no  need  of  the  sun,  neither  of  the  moon,  to  shine 
upon  it :  for  the  glory  of  the  Lord  did  lighten  it,  and  the  lamp  thereof 
is  the  Lamb.  .  .  .  And  the  gates  thereof  shall  in  no  wise  be  shut 
by  day  —  for  there  shall  be  no  night  there.  .  .  .  And  there  shall  be 
no  curse  any  more.  .  .  .  And  God  will  dwell  with  his  people  and  be 
their  God ;  and  He  shall  wipe  away  every  tear  from  their  eyes :  and 
death  shall  be  no  more ;  neither  shall  there  be  mourning,  nor  crying 
nor  pain,  any  more :  the  first  things  are  passed  away." 

"Hie  breve  vivitur,  hie  breve  plangitur,  hie  breve  fletur; 
Non  breve  vivere,  non  breve  plangere  retribuetur ; 

Patria  luminis,  inscia  turbinis,  inscia  litis, 

Patria  splendida,  terraque  florida,  libera  spinis, 
Danda  fidelibus  est  ibi  civibus,  hie  peregrinis. 


i 


UNIVERSAL  ELEMENTS   OF  RELIGIOUS  EXPERIENCE      53 

Pax  sine  crimine,  pax  sine  turbine,  pax  sine  rixa, 
Meta  laboribus,  atque  tumultibus  anchora  fixa. 
Para  mea  Rex  mens,  in  proprio  Deus  ipse  decore 
Vivus  amabitur,  atque  videbitur  Auctor  in  ore. 
Tunc  Jacob  Israel,  et  Lia  tunc  Rachel  efficietur, 
Tunc  Syon  atria  pulcraque  patria  perficietur." 

("Hora  Novissima,"  Bernard  of  Cluni.) 

Or,  again,  in  the  group  of  ^* Pilgrim"  hymns,  where 
heaven  is  defined  as  the  goal  of  the  pilgrimage,  and  as  of  a 
contrasting  character  to  the  pilgrimage  itself,  e,g,  in 
Faber's  hymn, ' '  The  Pilgruns  of  the  Night " :  — 

"Hark,  hark,  my  soul :  angelic  songs  are  swelling 

O'er  earth's  green  fields,  and  ocean's  wave-beat  shore ; 
How  sweet  the  truth  those  blessed  strains  are  telling, 
Of  that  new  life  when  sin  shall  be  no  more. 

"  Rest  comes  at  length ;  though  life  be  long  and  dreary, 
The  day  must  dawn,  and  darksome  night  be  past : 
All  journeys  end  in  welcomes  to  the  weary. 
And  heaven,  the  heart's  true  home,  will  come  at  last. 

"  Angels !  sing  on,  your  faithful  watches  keeping ; 
Sing  us  sweet  fragments  of  the  songs  above ; 
While  we  toil  on,  and  soothe  ourselves  with  weeping 
Till  life's  long  night  shall  break  in  endless  love." 

Or  this :  — 

"I'm  but  a  stranger  here, 
Heaven  is  my  home. 
Earth  is  a  desert  drear. 
Heaven  is  my  home. 

"  Dangers  and  sorrows  stand. 
Round  me  on  every  hand. 
Heaven  is  my  fatherland. 
Heaven  is  my  home." 

Or,  in  the  well-known  hymn :  — 

"  O  Paradise !    O  Paradise ! 
Who  doth  not  crave  for  rest? 
Who  would  not  seek  the  happy  land 
Where  they  that  love  are  blest? 


i 


54  THE    DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

"  0  Paradise !    O  Paradise ! 
The  world  is  growing  old  ; 
Who  would  not  be  at  rest  and  free 
Where  love  is  never  cold? 

"  0  Paradise !    O  Paradise ! 
I  want  to  sin  no  more ; 
I  want  to  be  as  pure  on  earth 
As  on  thy  spotless  shore. 

"  Where  loyal  hearts  and  true 
Stand  ever  in  the  light, 
All  rapture  through  and  through 
In  God's  most  holy  sight." 

It  is  true  that  many  of  these  evangelical  hymns  seem, 
from  the  popular  present-day  point  of  view,  to  over- 
emphasize the  emptiness  and  misery  of  the  temporal  life 
and  the  consequent  sense  of  weariness  and  despair,  and  if 
we  should  give  the  autobiographical  accounts  of  con- 
version experiences,  this  unhappy  consciousness  and  the 
contrast  with  the  post-conversion  state  would  even  more 
strongly  appear.  But  may  it  not  be  that  our  modern, 
scientifically  enlightened  consciousness  is  mistaken  in 
regard  to  the  sense  of  world-weariness,  incompleteness, 
and  sense  of  sin  ?  Do  we  not  find  the  same  general  char- 
acter expressed  in  the  Buddhistic  literat\u:e  and  in  the 
writings  of  the  Stoics  ? 

It  would  be  arbitrary,  therefore,  to  dismiss  this  whole 
experience  from  religion  as  mere  sentimentalism  and  pessi- 
mism. As  to  the  modern  sense  of  sin,  the  moral  conscious- 
ness of  unworthiness  in  an  enlightened  religious  experience, 
— perhaps  the  reason  that  this  consciousness,  when  it  ex- 
ists, is  so  strong,  —  is  because  of  the  clearness  of  vision  of 
the  ideal,  because  of  the  realization  of  what  ''ought  to 
be."  Before  our  vision  of  perfect  Holiness,  there  seems 
no  weakness  in  admitting  that  we  are  ''miserable  sinners'' 
all.  "Against  thee,  thee  only  have  I  sinned,"  says  the 
Psalmist. 


UNIVERSAL   ELEMENTS   OF   RELIGIOUS   EXPERIENCE      55 

It  is  true,  again,  that  we  do  not  find  this,  which  I  have 
termed  the  second  element  of  religious  experience  much 
expressed  in  the  hymns  and  other  literature  of  modern 
liberalism.  There  are  two  reasons,  I  think,  for  this. 
First,  liberalism  tends  to  emphasize  another  attitude, 
namely,  the  motor  element  of  religious  experience.  That 
is,  the  given  situation  being  as  it  is,  what  shall  I  do  in 
regard  to  it?  The  consideration  of  this  attitude  belongs 
to  a  discussion  of  the  third  element  of  religious  experience 
—  the  process.  The  second  reason  is  that  modern  liberal- 
ism often  seems  to  tend  to  Naturalism  and  a  natural 
religion  so-called.  This  attitude  we  have  already  con- 
sidered and  rejected  as  incompatible  with  the  essence  of 
religious  experience.  And  after  all,  does  not  the  awakened 
social  consciousness,  which  is  so  striking  a  characteristic 
of  our  times,  really  imply  very  much  this  same  dualistic 
experience?  The  modern  man  feels  himself  responsible 
for  the  wrongs,  the  suffering,  and  injustices  of  the  social 
order  —  even  if  he  did  not  by  his  own  deed  bring  them 
about.  In  essence  he  has  in  this  respect  a  consciousness 
of  sin,  although  this  is  a  community  sense  of  sin  rather 
than  of  the  evangelical  individualistic  type. 

"At  vesper  tide 
One  virtuous  and  pure  in  heart  did  pray, 
'Since  none  I  wronged  in  deed  or  word  to-day, 
From  whom  should  I  crave  pardon?  Master,  say.' " 

"  A  voice  replied :  — 

"  'From  the  sad  child  whose  play  thou  hast  not  planned, 
The  goaded  heart  whose  friend  thou  didst  not  stand, 
The  rose  that  died  for  water  from  thy  hand.'  " 
"Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it  not  unto  one  of  the  least  of  them,  ye  did  it 
not  unto  me."  ^ 

Enough  has  been  said,  I  think,  to  suggest  to  our  minds 
that  for  the  distinctly  religious  consciousness  this  opposi- 
tion in  one  form  or  another  of  longing  and  satisfaction,  of 

*And  see,  for  recent  literature,  Galsworthy's  plays  of  "Strife" 
and  "Justice"  and  Tolstoy's  "Resurrection." 


56  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

the  incomplete  over  against  the  complete  state,  the  sin- 
ful consciousness  over  against  the  consciousness  of  the 
goal  of  perfection  and  holiness  is  universally  present.  To 
give  the  logical  ground  of  its  universaUty  would  take  us 
back  once  more  to  the  natural  ideality  of  man,  —  which 
in  creating  a  better  world  inevitably  finds  by  contrast 
this  its  present  world  unsatisfactory,  incomplete,  and  to 
some  extent  at  least  evil,  and  its  present  state  one  of  un- 
satisfied longing,  of  incompleteness  —  on  the  ethical 
level,  —  of  moral   sinfulness.^ 

Of  course  there  are  types  of  consciousness  for  which 
this  contrast  is  not  as  strongly  marked  as  it  is  in  the  ex- 
amples given.  In  those  persons,  for  instance,  whose  re- 
ligious life  seems  to  have  been  a  gradual  unfolding  like 
unto  that  of  a  plant,  without  any  apparent  crisis  of  trans- 
formation or  conscious  recognition  of  the  conflict  between 
their  present  state  and  the  ideal  end  —  James's  ^^  once- 
born  men."  Yet  even  for  these  (when  not  a  case  of  mere 
naturalism  or  unconscious  growth),  the  opposition  must 
exist  between  the  less  developed  state  and  the  goal  con- 
sciously aimed  at,  desired,  or  hoped  for  —  between  im- 
perfection and  perfection.  Certainly  not  all  experiences 
go  down  into  such  abysms  of  guilt,  doubt,  or  despair  as 
some  of  those  described  in  conversion  cases,  or  those  in 
records  of  the  Salvation  Army,  e,g.  in  '* Twice-Born  Men" 
of  Begbie.  But  everywhere  there  is  the  contrast  in  some 
form  between  the  '^old  life"  and  the  ''new,"  and  especially 
do  we  find  this  contrast  emphasized  in  those  typical  figures 
in  reUgious  experience,  the  great  mystics  and  saints  of  the 
church.  The  cleavage  between  the  old  life  and  the  new 
life  marks  a  critical  point  in  religious  experience. 

And  so  in  all  spiritual  religion  we  find,  I  think,  some- 
thing which  corresponds  to  a  day  of  Judgment.  Mediaeval 
and  Renaissance  literature  and  art  symbolize  for  us  again 
and  again  this  crisis  of  the  soul.    The  great  illustrations 

*  For  a  special  consideration  of  the  sinful  consciousness,  see  "Note" 
following  the  present  chapter. 


UNIVERSAL  ELEMENTS   OF  RELIGIOUS   EXPERIENCE      57 

it  has  been  said  in  these  two  fields  are  Thomas  of  Celano's 
hymn,  the  ^^Dies  Irae/'  and  Michael  Angelo's  fresco  of  the 
Last  Judgment  in  the  Sistine  Chapel.  I  give  three  verses 
from  the  hymn  :  — 

"Quantus  tremor  est  futurus, 

Quando  Judex  est  venturus, 

Cuncta  stricte  discussunis." 

"Liber  scriptus  proferetur, 
In  quo  totum  continetur, 
Unde  mundue  judicetur. 

"  Judex  ergo  cum  sedebit, 
Quidquid  later,  apparebit : 
Nil  inultum  remanebit." 

The  symbolism  for  this  hymn  is  foimd  in  the  book  of 
the  prophet  Zephaniah :  — 

"That  day  is  a  day  of  wrath,  a  day  of  trouble  and  distress,  a  day 
of  wasteness  and  desolation,  .  .  .  and  I  will  bring  distress  upon  men 
because  they  have  sinned  against  the  Lord,  .  .  .  Hold  thy  peace  at 
the  presence  of  the  Lord  thy  God ;  for  the  day  of  the  Lord  is  at  hand." 

(Zeph.  1.) 

Here  historically  it  is  a  judgment  for  the  sins  of  Ma- 
nasseh,  king  of  Judah.  But  this  "day  of  the  Lord''  ap- 
pears in  many  of  the  prophetic  books  —  and  wherever 
the  expression  occurs  it  refers  to  some  catastrophe  about 
to  take  place  as  a  punishment  for  the  sins  of  Israel  or  of 
some  other  nation.  In  the  first  of  the  prophets,  Amos, 
we  find  the  beginning  of  this  concept  as  the  critical  dis- 
tinction between  moral  good  and  moral  evil.  So  we  may 
say,  the  day  of  judgment  represents,  perhaps,  that  spir- 
itual crisis,  when  sooner  or  later,  man  shall  see  himself  as 
he  is  in  the  sight  of  God. 

"Oro  supplex  et  acclinis 
Cor  contritum  quasi  crinis. 
Gere  curam  mei  finis. 

"  Lacrymosa  dies  ilia 
Qua  renuget  ex  punilla 
Judicandus  homo  verus 
Huic  ergo  parce  Deus." 


58  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

It  is  in  tragic  symbolism  that  such  a  day  of  judgment  is 
usually  portrayed.  Yet  there  are  those  who  have  no  con- 
viction of  sin  in  any  such  intense  form.  Nevertheless,  the 
fundamental  distinction  between  the  old  and  the  new,  the 
incomplete  and  the  complete,  the  evil  and  the  good,  re- 
mains for  all  who  have  had  any  religious  experience 
whatever. 

The  recognition  of  the  distinction  may  come,  however, 
through  a  joyful  insight  rather  than  through  sin  and 
sorrow.  It  may  come  as  the  beautiful  revelation  of  new 
life  —  as  the  meaning  of  a  heroic  or  unselfish  deed  flashes 
upon  us ;  or  it  comes  as  a  glimpse  of  beauty,  some  wonder 
at  new  truth ;  or  as  ^Hhe  inspiration  in  some  human  face 
divine  "  ;  or,  as  Emerson  describes  the  experience  in  the 
' '  Over-soul ' ' :  ' '  Perceptions  of  the  absolute  law, "  ^ '  Solu- 
tions of  the  souFs  own  questioning,'^  ^'A  blasting  with 
excess  of  light,"  ''That  shudder  of  awe  and  delight  with 
which  the  individual  soul  always  mingles  with  the  uni- 
versal." Thus  beholding  the  vision  of  the  Ideal  Good, 
the  individual  realizes  his  own  incompletion  and  unworthi- 
ness,  and  worshipping  prays  :  — 

"May  thy  light  within  us  shine, 
Oh,  thou  light  and  life  and  love  divine." 

Such  an  experience,  joyful  as  it  is,  usually  comes  at  last, 
as  the  above  illustrations  suggest,  in  some  sudden  flash 
of  intense  insight  which  may  well  be  called  mystical,  and 
which  marks  a  crisis  in  the  life  of  the  soul. 

Finally,  then,  we  may  conclude  that  religious  experience 
is  formally  a  triadic  relation,  of  two  opposed  terms,  and  a 
third,  the  tie  between  them,  which  expresses  their  re- 
lationship. Concretely,  this  opposition  assumes  a  great 
variety  of  expressions,  which,  however,  follow  in  the  main 
two  general  types  which  we  may  call  perhaps  — 

^  The  cosmic  opposition,  and 

The  moral  opposition, 

1  Pfleiderer  notes  this  distinction.  See  "  Rehgion  and  Historic  Faiths." 
I  do  not  know  who  first  classified  the  historic  reUgions  in  this  way. 


UNIVERSAL  ELEMENTS   OF  RELIGIOUS   EXPERIENCE      59 

or,  again  — 

The  opposition  in  the  outer  world  and  the  opposition  in 
the  soul  of  man.  And  again  these  two  types  of  opposition 
themselves  are,  and  have  been,  in  the  history  of  religion, 
in  more  or  less  conflict  the  one  with  the  other. 

If  Pfleiderer's  contention  is  correct  ^  that  the  earliest 
form  of  religion  is  ^^ naive  patriarchal  Heno theism,^'  and 
that  the  earliest  form  of  the  tribal  deity  was  "a.  combina- 
tion of  the  collective  ancestral  spirits  of  the  group  with  a 
personified  natural  power"  (the  sun  in  Japan  and  Peru, 
and  Ra  in  Egypt)  or  of  the  earth  as  the  giver  of  fertility 
(Isis,  Osiris,  Magna  Mater)  or  some  species  of  animal; 
then  we  can  see  how  historically  such  a  conflict  between 
the  cosmic  order  and  the  moral  ideal  might  arise. 

The  relation  of  the  tribal  god  to  his  worshipper  is  at 
first  a  naturalistic  one  through  the  bond  of  physical  de- 
scent (blood  bond).  The  powers  of  nature  act  in  a  regular 
way.  They  act  without  reference  to  man's  individual 
caprice;  they  embody  some  permanent  fate  or  order  to 
which  man  must  submit,  or  in  some  way  get  into  har- 
mony with.  They  represent  a  world  order  —  which 
may  or  may  not  express  that  which  seems  highest,  or 
preserve  and  protect  that  which  is  dearest  to  the  heart  of 
man. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  deity  as  collective  ancestral 
soul,  the  father  and  protector  of  the  tribe,  must  have  some- 
thing of  human,  moral  characteristics.  The  relation  of 
the  tribal  group  to  its  god  was  also  the  primitive,  moral- 
social  bond  which  united  the  members  of  the  tribe  to 
one  another  and  which  devoted  them  to  a  common  good, 
the  social  welfare,  —  a  primitive  moral  obligation  which 
becomes  more  spiritual  in  significance  with  the  ethical 
development  of  tribe  and  nation.  From  these  two  con- 
ceptions, then,  we  are  able  to  understand  how  some  such 
opposition  and  conflict  as  that  referred  to  above  might 
arise  and  the  various  forms  it  might  assume  —  while  it 
1  See  Pfleiderer,  !' Religion  and  Historic  Faiths." 


60  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

remains  fundamentally  a  conflict  between  an  unchanging 
or  fated  natural  order,  the  order  of  the  universe  —  and 
the  ethical  ideal  of  man,  which  he  comes  inevitably  to 
embody  in  his  conception  of  his  God. 

In  the  childhood  of  the  race,  man  looked  out  upon  his 
world  with  wondering  eyes  as  the  little  child  does  to-day, 
and  like  the  child  he  asked  the  questions,  ''What?"  and 
''Why?  " 

In  the  physical  world  certain  contrasts  and  rhythmic 
phenomena  of  nature  seem  to  have  impressed  the  mind 
and  imagination  of  primitive  man,  e.g.  the  contrast  and 
repetition  of  day  and  night,  of  light  and  darkness,  the 
procession  of  the  sun  in  its  diurnal  and  annual  course, 
the  summer  and  winter  solstice,  the  movements  of  the  stars 
in  their  courses,  the  rhythm  of  the  seasons  with  the  decay 
and  death  of  vegetation  in  the  autumn  and  its  rebirth  in 
the  spring,  and  the  phenomenon  of  physical  growth. 

Primitive  man  believes  in  spirits,  but  at  first  these 
spirits  are  chiefly  identified  with  the  powers  of  nature. 
But  as  man  advances  intellectually  and  morally,  the  op- 
position in  the  outer  world,  the  opposition  between  dark- 
ness and  light  and  the  rest,  is  to  a  great  extent  transferred 
to  the  inner  world  and  interpreted  as  a  struggle  going  on 
in  his  own  heart.  The  microcosm  is  a  copy  of  the  ma- 
crocosm. We  find  classic  illustrations  of  this  conflict  in 
the  experience  of  St.  Paul  (Romans  7),  in  St.  Augus- 
tine's ' '  Confessions '' ;  in  John  Bunyan's ' '  Grace  Abounding 
to  the  Chief  of  Signers" ;  and,  indeed,  throughout  litera- 
ture {e.g.  in  Shakespeare :  Lancelot  Gobbo,  in  the  "Mer- 
chant of  Venice";  Macbeth;  The  King,  in  "Hamlet"; 
Edmund,  in  "  King  Lear,"  etc.)  as  well  as  in  Salvation  Army 
accounts  and  in  the  evangelical  experience  of  conversion 
which  students  of  the  psychology  of  religion,  like  Starbuck 
and  Coe,  have  collected  by  the  questionnaire  method. 
Further,  the  experience  is  not  merely  one  of  the  individual, 
but  of  social  groups  and  nations.  The  opposition,  when  it 
does  not  reach  the  level  of  the  guilty  conscience,  still 


UNIVERSAL   ELEMENTS   OF   RELIGIOUS   EXPERIENCE      61 

remains  as  the  problem  of  evil  in  the  world.  Different 
historical  religions  emphasize  the  opposition  in  one  or 
the  other  form  —  giving  us  two  principal  types  of  histori- 
cal^ religion:  First,  the  nature  types,  starting  from  the 
contrast  in  the  outer  world,  find  beside  the  opposition 
itself,  regularity,  rhythm,  repetition,  eternal  recurrence, 
unity,  allness,  wholeness,  the  conflict  absorbed  in  the  all 
or  one  which  is  good  either  in  the  sense  of  fated  but  morally 
indifferent,  or  in  the  aesthetic  sense  of  good,  when  the 
tragedy  and  evil  become  merely  partial  elements  in  an 
harmonious  whole,  as  musical  discords  are  solved  in  the 
symphony  as  a  whole.  These  are  Pantheistic  and  Ab- 
solutist religions  of  the  type  of  the  Egyptian  religion  and 
of  Brahmanism. 

The  second  type,  starting  from  the  conflict  in  the  inner 
life  of  man,  in  the  opposition  of  the  morally  good  and  evil, 
gives  the  dualistic  and  moralistic  types,  like  Zoroastrian- 
ism  and  the  Hebrew  religion.  Later  types  of  historical 
religions  emphasizing  especially  one  motive  or  the  other 
have  tried  to  unite  the  two  motives,  and  to  reconcile  the 
opposition  to  which  the  two  types  themselves  give  rise, 
e.g.  such  religions  as  Buddhism,  Orphism,  Stoicism,  and 
Christianity. 

Buddhism  and  Stoicism,  while  they  are  profoundly 
ethical  systems,  yet  still  refer  to  an  invisible  world,  the 
proper  relation  to  which  is  in  part  renunciation  and  sub- 
mission, i.e.  the  distinctly  religious  attitude  as  it  is  usually 
called.  Orphism,  Neo-Platonism,  and  mediaeval  Chris- 
tianity emphasize  especially  the  mystical  and  aesthetic 
side,  yet  have  also  their  essential  ethical  practices.  The 
Christianity  of  the  present  day  seems  to  be  gradually 
swinging  over  to  the  ethical  and  social  side  —  while  yet 
such  movements  as  Theosophy,  New  Thought,  and  Chris- 
tian Science  represent  the  other,  the  mystical  or  specifically 
religious  elements. 

1  See  Pfleiderer,  "Religion  and  Historic  Faiths." 


62  the  drama  of  the  spiritual  life 

Summary 

But  leaving  this  discussion  for  the  present,  let  us  return 
to  our  primary  opposition  of  the  elements  of  a  concrete 
religious  experience.  The  terms  used  to  describe  these 
contrasting  elements  are  various,  but  take  their  coloring 
in  the  main  from  the  above  differing  lines  of  thought  —  e.g. 

In  Buddhism,  the  opposition  is  expressed  as  the  oppo- 
sition between  the  wheel  of  existence  and  Nirvana,  Ig- 
norance and  Enlightenment,  Desire  and  Renunciation, 
Consciousness  and  Not-Gonsciousness,  Birth  and  Not- 
Birth,  Transitory  Life  which  is  Misery  and  the  Abode  of 
Peace,  Bliss,  utter  Nothingness. 

For  Stoicism,  it  is  the  opposition  between  the  Emptiness 
and  Vanity  of  a  life  dependent  on  changing  fortune,  and 
the  calm,  disciplined,  and  resigned  life  of  Reason,  i.e. 
*^The  City  of  Man's  Soul.'' 

For  Orphism,  the  opposition  is  that  between  the  life 
heedless  of  the  eternal  laws,  the  life  of  those  given  over  to 
restless  ambitions,  jealousies,  and  petty  strife,  —  the 
worship  of  ^Hhe  ruthless  will,"  —  and  the  mystic  joy  of 
the  purified  and  free,  who  have  learnt  the  meaning  of 
wisdom  and  of  love. 

For  the  early  Hebrew  prophets,  the  opposition  is  that 
between  moral  evil  and  moral  good,  and  the  contrast  is 
drawn  between  the  sinful  Israel  and  the  redeemed  Israel. 
In  the  prophets  of  the  Exile,  the  goal  becomes  distinctly 
social,  —  embodied  in  the  regenerated  social  community, 
for  Ezekiel  a  legalistic  and  formalistic  conception  of  a 
city  which  is  a  temple  and  the  name  of  it  ''The  Lord  is 
there"  ;  while  the  New  Jerusalem  of  the  redeemed  Israel 
of  the  later  Isaiah,  is  described  rather  in  the  aesthetic 
terms  of  happiness,  prosperity,  and  beauty,  which  contrast 
with  the  description  of  the  preceding  state  of  Israel  for- 
saken and  sorrowing. 

"The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  God  is  upon  me  because  he  hath  anointed 
me  to  preach  good  tidings  unto  the  meek ;  he  hath  sent  me  to  bind 


UNIVERSAL  ELEMENTS   OF  RELIGIOUS  EXPERIENCE      63 

up  the  broken-hearted,  to  proclaim  liberty  to  the  captives,  and  the 
opening  of  the  prison  to  them  that  are  bound,  to  proclaim  the  accept- 
able year  of  the  Lord,  to  comfort  all  that  mourn  in  Zion,  to  give  unto 
them  a  garland  for  ashes,  the  oil  of  joy  for  mourning,  the  garment 
of  praise  for  the  spirit  of  heaviness.  And  they  shall  call  them  a  holy 
people,  the  redeemed  of  the  Lord:  and  thou  shalt  be  called  Sought 
out,  a  city  not  forsaken." 

(Isaiah  60 ;  also  Isaiah  61,  62.) 
"For  behold  I  create  new  heavens  and  a  new  earth :  and  the  former 
things  shall  not  be  remembered,  nor  come  into  mind.    And  I  will 
rejoice  in  Jerusalem  and  joy  in  my  people :  and  the  voice  of  weeping 
shall  be  no  more  heard  in  her,  nor  the  voice  of  crying." 

Or,  again,  in  the  Psalms  the  distinction  is  drawn  between 
the  life  of  even  one  day  in  the  courts  of  the  Lord  and  a 
thousand  elsewhere :  — 

"One  thing  have  I  asked  of  the  Lord ;  that  will  I  seek  after ; 
That  I  may  dwell  in  the  house  of  the  Lord  all  the  days  of  my  life, 
To  behold  the  beauty  of  the  Lord,  and  to  inquire  in  his  temple, 
For  in  the  day  of  trouble  he  shall  keep  me  secretly  in  his  pavilion : 
In  the  court  of  his  tabernacle  shall  he  hide  me : 
He  shall  lift  me  up  upon  a  rock." 

(Psalm  27 :  4r-5.) 

In  the  writings  of  St.  Paul,  the  contrast  is  between  the 
kingdom  of  this  world  and  the  kingdom  of  God,  between 
the  natural  man  and  the  spiritual  man,  or  the  natural  life 
and  the  redeemed  life  hid  with  Christ  in  God. 

Then,  again,  the  opposition  is  expressed  simply  as  the 
opposition  between  (spiritual)  darkness  and  light;  ^Hhis 
life"  and  the  life  eternal  of  the  Fourth  Gospel;  as  the 
^^Unio  Mystica"  of  Christian  experience  which  was  most 
completely  expressed,  perhaps,  in  the  monastic  cell,  as 
opposed  to  the  life  of  worldliness  and  separation  from  God ; 
in  the  ''Neant"  of  the  extreme  Mystics  and  Quietists  like 
St.  Theresa  and  Mme.  Guyon  —  a  state  of  acceptance, 
passivity,  and  trance,  a  state  of  disinterested  love  over 
against  the  Hfe  of  the  striving  personal  will.  Other  forms 
are  the  city  of  Satan  and  the  city  of  God  of  St.  Augustine ; 
or,  once  again,  in  the  more  individual  illustrations  such  as 


I 


64  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

we  find  in  books  like  Starbuck's  on  conversion  experiences, 
where  in  psychological  terms  the  contrast  is  drawn  be- 
tween the  '^Old  Life''  and  the  ^^New  Life,"  the  Lesser  Life 
and  the  Larger  Life,  the  Habitual  self  and  the  self  of 
Surrender  and  Aspiration,  Incompleteness  and  Complete- 
ness, Longing  and  Satisfaction,  the  Lost  and  the  Saved, 
a  Seeking  and  a  Finding,  a  State  of  Sin,  and  Estrangement 
from  God,  of  doubt,  restlessness,  anxiety,  or  a  state  of 
Forgiveness,  Redemption,  Relief,  Acceptance,  Salvation, 
united  to  God,  Wholeness  of  life.  Calmness,  Harmony, 
Peace,  Beatitude ;  or,  once  again,  as  in  the  experience  of 
Tolstoy  —  '^The  Meaningless  Life"  and  the  consequent 
state  of  despair,  over  against  a  life  of  meaning  through 
resignation  and  the  practice  of  the  simple  life  and  the 
spirit  of  social  kindhness  —  ''To  know  God  and  to  live 
are  one." 

Or,  once  again,  the  opposition  is  expressed  in  religious- 
social  terms  as  in  the  Utopian  ideals  of  all  ages.  Here 
the  contrast  is  drawn  between  the  present  social  order 
with  its  inequalities,  injustices,  and  inhumanities,  and 
the  golden  age  to  come  of  the  transformed  social 
order,  when  all  these  world-old  wrongs  shall  be  done 
away  in  a  universal  human  brotherhood,  —  that  ever- 
recurring,  ever  unfulfilled  world-dream  of  the  idealist 
man. 

This,  then,  is  what  we  find  upon  an  analysis  of  cases  of 
concrete  religious  experience,  viz.  a  sense  of  need,  of 
limitation,  of  incompleteness  deepening  into  the  conscious- 
ness of  sin  with  its  whole  tragic  story  of  bitter  regret,  self- 
accusation,  anguish,  and  despair,  and,  over  against  this, 
an  experience  of  redemption,  of  salvation,  of  wholeness 
and  unity ;  peace ;  harmony. 

So  much  for  the  primary  contrast  of  two  of  the  universal 
elements  of  religious  experience.  This  experience  is, 
after  all,  one,  and  religious  faith  holds  that  this  funda- 
mental opposition  of  the  religious  consciousness  can  be 


UNIVERSAL   ELEMENTS   OF   RELIGIOUS   EXPERIENCE      65 

overcome.  But  how  ?  We  must  now  turn  to  a  considera- 
tion of  the  third  element,  —  the  process  or  bond  which 
unites  in  one  whole  of  experience  the  two  elements  already 
considered. 

Note  on  Sin  and  the  Consciousness  of  Sin 

"Midway  upon  the  journey  of  our  life  I  found  myseK  in  a  dark 
wood,  where  the  right  way  was  lost.  Ah !  how  hard  a  thing  it  is  to 
tell  what  this  wild  and  rough  and  difficult  wood  was,  which  in  thought 
renews  my  fear !  .  .  .    So  bitter  is  it  that  death  is  little  more." 

In  our  second  chapter  we  considered,  in  a  general  way 
and  especially  in  relation  to  the  first  element  which  we 
have  called  the  religious  ideal,  the  second  of  the  universal 
elements,  namely,  the  sense  of  dissatisfaction  which  in  an 
ethical  religion  deepens  into  the  bitter  anguish  of  the 
sense  of  guilt.  In  this  unhappy  consciousness,  we  have 
the  reverse  side  to  that  consciousness  of  the  goal  of  blessed- 
ness and  salvation  which  the  fact  of  the  ideality  of  religion 
presents  and  which  religious  immediacy  claims  to  have 
found.  In  a  word,  in  rehgious  experience  we  found  the 
divided  self  of  which  Professor  James  has  had  so  much  to 
say.  This  unhappy  consciousness  itself  we  did  not  very 
fully  describe,  but  books  on  the  psychology  of  religion  have 
given  a  full  account  of  this  period  of  storm  and  stress, 
the  abysm  a^nd  dark  night  through  which  the  soul  passes 
on  its  way  to  the  light.  In  our  analysis,  moreover,  we 
did  not  lay  great  stress  on  the  ''conviction  of  sin."  In 
this  ''Note"  I  shall  try  to  analyze  more  in  detail  this 
second  element  when  it  has  reached  the  moral  stage,  or 
the  consciousness  of  guilt.  Nowadays,  the  enlightened 
and  scientifically  trained  consciousness  asks :  Is  there 
such  a  thing  as  real  sin?  That  is  a  hard  saying:  "The 
sins  of  the  fathers  shall  be  visited  upon  the  children  to 
the  third  and  fourth  generations,"  yet  we  know  that  it  is 
true  that  the  children  bear  the  bitter  fruits  of  ancestral 
wrong-doing ;  but  did  the  fathers  really  sin,  or  was  it  in 
their  case,  too,  the  result  of  ignorance,  inheritance,  and 


66  THE   DKAMA   OP  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

environment  ?  In  short,  if  we  track  back  sin  to  its  source, 
what  do  we  find  ? 

Let  us  consider  this  problem  of  sin  for  a  little,  more 
closely  than  we  have  done  heretofore,  and  first  we  must 
note  that  sin  in  itself  —  or  the  logical  definition  of  sin  — 
and  the  sinful  consciousness  are  two  very  different  matters. 

The  Definition  of  Sin,  —  Logically  speaking,  we  should 
mean,  I  think,  by  sin  the  attitude  of  one  who  having  seen 
what  is  the  ^^best,"  that  is,  of  one  who  having  an  ideal  and 
having  freely  chosen  it  as  his  ideal  or  purpose  in  l^f e,  more 
or  less  dehberately  becomes  faithless  to  this  end.  In 
other  words,  sin  in  the  final  meaning  of  the  term  is  bound 
up  with  the  idea  of  freedom  of  the  will.  This  is  the  defini- 
tion of  sin,  but  the  consciousness  of  sin  is  something  else. 
One  may  have  a  consciousness  of  guilt  when  not  guilty 
at  all  in  the  sense  defined  above. 

Of  the  consciousness  of  sin,  there  appear  to  be  three 
types  or  classes.  They  have  been  suggested  in  our  second 
chapter.  They  are  all  found  in  Paul's  letter  to  the  Ro- 
mans ;  the  first  two  types  are  explicitly  expressed  in  the 
famous  seventh  chapter ;  the  third  is  implied  throughout 
the  Epistle. 

Class  I.  —  First,  then,  there  is  the  inherited  sin,  — 
the  sin  of  the  natural  man,  —  of  the  old  Adam,  as  Paul 
describes  it.  These  inherited  tendencies  may  be  all 
wrong  according  to  the  socially  accepted  standards,  yet 
there  is  no  sin  in  them  until  the  individual  becomes 
conscious  of  the  social  standard,  or  rather,  until  he  con- 
sciously recognizes  something  as  the  ^^besf  or  what 
'^ ought  to  be.''  '^Before  I  knew  the  law,"  said  Paul,  ''  1 
had  no  sin.  Without  the  law  sin  was  dead.  When  the 
law  came,  then  sin  slew  me  and  I  died." 

In  a  word,  inherited  tendencies  may  have  become 
rooted  habits  before  a  man  is  conscious  of  them  as  par- 
ticularly vicious,  as  a  child  acquires  the  habit  of  lying  out 
of  romancing  or  play  tendencies.  These  inherited  ten- 
dencies had  grown  strong  before  the  ideal  came  to  the  man, 


UNIVERSAL  ELEMENTS   OF  RELIGIOUS  EXPERIENCE      67 

therefore  if  his  acts  Tare  sinful  according  to  the  social 
standard  or  ideal  standard,  they  were  in  no  sense  dehber- 
ately  so,  but  now,  through  some  accepted  standard,  or 
through  the  enlightening  vision  of  some  vivid  personaHty, 
or  through  the  direct  teaching  of  friend  or  book,  or  through 
some  mystical  revelation  so-called,  the  man  begins  to 
recognize  the  value  of  another  way  of  life,  and  in  the  light 
of  this  revelation  his  own  life  seems  miserably  base  and 
unworthy.  And  now  it  seems  too  late  to  break  with  the 
past,  hence  the  struggle,  the  intolerable  anguish,  described 
by  St.  Augustine  and  Bunyan  in  their  autobiographies.^ 
Again  and  again  the  man  struggUng  with  all  his  might  to 
drive  out  his  bad  impulses  (Satan)  fails.  The  sin  had 
nothing  to  do  with  deliberate  choice;  so  St.  Paul  and 
St.  Augustine  can  say :  '^It  was  not  I,"  but  Satan  who  did 
this  evil  deed  (^^sin  in  me'')  or  lived  this  evil  life.  Yet, 
because,  now,  on  the  whole,  they  identify  themselves  with 
the  will  to  overcome  and  get  away  from  bad  habits,  there 
is  a  genuine  consciousness  of  sin  with  all  its  accompanying 
struggle  and  misery. 

We  do  not  know  how  much  freedom  a  man  has  to  break 
with  such  impulses  and  rooted  habits.  The  Ideal  has  got 
to  win  the  mastery.  Perhaps  it  will,  in  time,  as  it  did  with 
Augustine  and  Bunyan.  Salvation  is,  we  may  believe, 
in  large  measure  a  work  of  grace,  but  everywhere  this 
world-old  battle  between  good  and  evil  is  going  on  both 
in  the  individual  and  in  the  community  as  a  whole.  '^  Self, 
Ambition,  Advancement,  on  the  one  side;  Right  and 
Love  on  the  other." 

Class  II.  —  In  the  second  class  is  that  consciousness 
of  sin  which  is  in  accord  with  the  logical  definition  of  sin. 
I  had  once  a  dream,  an  ideal,  a  way  of  life.  It  was  my  own 
enlightened  choice,  and  I  have  been  faithless.  I  turned 
my  back  on  it  and  forgot  it,  so  I  wilfully  disrupted  my  own 
selfhood ;  I  have  estranged  myself  from  God  and  become 
^'si.  divided  self."  Can  there  be  any  anguish  more  in- 
1  See  Chapter  IV. 


68  THE    DRAMA    OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

tolerable  than  such  a  guilty  consciousness?  (Shake- 
speare has  some  illustrations  of  it,  as  Edmund  in  "  King 
Lear/'  perhaps,  and  the  King  in  ^'  Hamlet '' ;  Arthur 
Dimmesdale  in  ''  The  Scarlet  Letter.") 

It  is  said  in  the  light  of  scientific  teaching  and  a  more 
cheerful  reUgious  view  of  the  nature  of  God,  that  the 
sense  of  genuine  sin  and  the  belief  in  hell  are  disappearing ; 
that  the  sin  in  our  first  class  is  not  really  sin  and  that  the 
sin  of  the  second  class  is  at  least  very  rare  in  an  enlightened 
age  and  really  impossible  from  a  scientific  point  of  view. 

Class  III.  —  But  this,  at  least,  is  not  true  of  the 
consciousness  of  sin  in  our  third  class.  This  comprises 
that  social  consciousness  of  sin  which  is,  in  fact,  largely 
a  phenomenon  of  modern  times.  In  this  class  of  the  con- 
sciousness of  sin,  the  individual  is  not  necessarily  guilty 
in  either  of  the  above  senses  of  sin.  His  consciousness  of 
sin  is  bound  up  with  the  fact  that  he  is  a  member  of  the 
community  and  that  ^*all  creation  groaneth  and  travaileth 
together. ''  Thus  the  sensitive,  socially  developed  con- 
sciousness of  our  time  feels  responsible  (one  may  even  say 
guilty)  for  evils  such  as  those  which  grew  out  of  our  Civil 
War;  for  graft;  for  the  negro  problem ;  for  white  slavery ; 
for  child  labor  and  the  other  evils  of  our  civilization  which 
gained  a  foothold  in  his  country  before  he  was  born.  Few 
who  are  alive  to-day,  for  instance,  could  be  held  directly 
responsible  for  the  evils  of  the  reconstruction  period  in  the 
South.  Yet,  the  modern  man  does  feel  guilty  in  regard 
to  this  old  wrong.  It  was  in  this  sense  that  the  Prophets 
of  Israel  bore  on  their  shoulders  the  guilt  of  the  whole 
community.  Israel  had  sinned,  and  they  were  one  with 
Israel's  life.  ''He  was  wounded  for  our  transgressions, 
he  was  bruised  for  our  iniquities.  .  .  .  All  we  like  sheep 
have  gone  astray,  we  have  turned  every  one  to  his  own 
way,  and  the  Lord  hath  laid  on  Him  the  iniquity  of  us  all.'' 

The  relation  of  the  consciousness  of  sin  to  the  social 
consciousness  is  complex ;  the  two  are  variously  inter- 
woven.    Here  we  find  that  tension  so  characteristic  of 


UNIVERSAL  ELEMENTS   OF  RELIGIOUS  EXPERIENCE      69 

our  day  ^  between  the  social  and  the  individual  standard 
of  right,  and  we  learn  that  there  is  sometimes  an  individual 
consciousness  of  sin  where  there  has  been  no  active  sin 
at  all,  but  even  the  opposite.     Society  has  set  a  moral 
standard  to  which  it  expects  the  individual  to  conform. 
This  standard,  it  is  true,  is  constantly  changing,  but  as  an 
external  standard  it  changes  more  slowly  than  does  the 
thought  of  the  ''ought"  in  the  mind  of  the  individual 
(that  is,  of  some  individuals).     It  is  not  a  foregone  con- 
clusion that  the  social  whole  i^  right  in  its  thought  of  what 
ought  to  be  the  universal  standard  of  right.     Is  the  in- 
dividual strong  enough  to  be  a  pioneer?     If  so,  he  may 
rejoice  in  his  new  adventure.     But  the  individual  is  bound 
in  any  case  to  suffer  because  he  is  so  dependent  on  social 
sanction  and  approval;  thus  he  may  come  to  feel  as  if 
a  sinner.     Shakespeare's  plays  abound  in  this  confronta- 
tion of  the  individual  with  the  social  world,  and  modern 
drama  and  fiction  have  dealt  abundantly  with  this  type 
of  the  consciousness  of  sin,  as  has  also  ancient  Greek 
drama.    Our  individual  may  actually  abandon  and  re- 
nounce his  own  ideal  of  what  he  believes  ought  to  be 
the  social  standard.     But  his  own  earlier  motives  and 
conduct  were  really  fine.     It  was  the  conventional  thing 
which  was  the  wrong  thing.     If  he  weakly  yields  to  the 
conventional  standards  against  his  own  convictions,  is 
he  not  now  the  sinner?     On  the  other  hand,  if  a  pioneer, 
how  far  shall  he  go  to  establish  an  idea?    He  may  not 
do  that  which  would  lead  to  general  anarchy  in  a  society 
as  yet  unready  for  his  idea;   surely  he  may  not  wreck 
the  social  whole  of  which  he  is  a  member,  yet  may  he 
not  still  be  faithful  to  his  ideal  in  intentj  even  if  not  able 
to  carry  it  out  practically  in  a  world  which  is  as  yet  un- 
able to  receive  it  ? 

In  this  connection  it  may  be  well  to  say  a  word  about 
forgiveness  and  to  ask  if  there  is  any  absolutely  unpar- 

1  See  Chapter  IV,  Section  III. 


70  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

donable  sin.  What  is  the  relation  of  forgiveness  to  our 
various  types  of  the  consciousness  of  sin?  What  makes 
forgiveness  possible  ?  To  begin  with  our  last  type  (Class 
III),  —  the  conmiunity  consciousness  of  sin,  —  it  is  easy 
to  see  that  man  can  be  freed  from  this  sin,  because  either 
he  himself  or  others  in  the  community  can  atone  for  these 
evils  by  their  self-sacrificing  deeds  which  overcome  and 
drive  out  the  evils.  Human  experience  shows  every  day 
how  those  who  have  had  nothing  to  do  directly  with  the 
wrongs  of  the  social  order  are  striving  with  all  the  love, 
strength,  and  enthusiasm  that  is  in  them  to  overcome  such 
ancient  evils  and  turn  the  currents  that  have  gone  astray 
into  channels  of  social  efficiency,  order,  and  righteousness 
and  creative  work.  And  from  type  I  the  individual  can 
be  freed  by  a  union  of  ''grace''  and  effort  of  his  own  which 
shall  at  last  overcome  inherited  impulses  and  bad  habits 
and  transform  them  into  good. 

But  in  regard  to  the  second  type  (i.e.  of  voluntary  sin), 
supposing  it  exists,  the  case  is  more  doubtful.  The  man 
has  been  faithless,  a  traitor  to  the  light.  Is  it  possible 
that  he  should  ever  forgive  himself  for  wilful  sin?  for  in 
this  type  of  sin  there  are  certain  irrevocable  evils. 

First,  he  has  done  the  terrible  deed  and,  as  George 
Meredith  puts  it,  "the  deed  once  set  in  motion  flows  on 
forever  to  the  great  account."  In  the  second  place,  there 
is  perhaps  some  other  human  being  (or  a  community  of 
such)  whom  the  sinner  has  wronged  —  one  not  only  whose 
happiness  has  been  destroyed,  but  whose  moral  nature, 
perhaps,  has  been  stunted  or  wrecked.  Alas,  alas  for 
that  life  which  was  meant  to  bless  the  world  with  its  beauty 
and  its  joy !  In  the  third  place,  there  is  the  actual  denial 
of  the  man's  self-chosen  good  (his  ideal),  and  this  is  a 
wrong  against  the  universe  itself. 

Now  the  irrevocable  is  the  irrevocable;  is  it,  then, 
possible  that  such  wrongs  can  ever  be  wiped  out?  This 
is  a  matter  for  serious  consideration.  We  may  note  in 
the  first  place  that  in  regard  to  points  one  and  two,  in  the 


UNIVERSAL  ELEMENTS   OF  RELIGIOUS   EXPERIENCE      71 

foregoing  paragraph  (i.e.  the  irrevocableness  of  the  deed 
and  its  fatal  consequences  in  the  injury  done  to  another 
individual  or  to  a  community),  —  that  what  is  true  here 
of  voluntary  sin  holds  equally  in  regard  to  sin  of  the  other 
types,  —  to  involuntary  sin,  to  inherited  sin,  and  even  to 
the  case  of  ignorance.  The  point  of  difference,  then,  lies 
not  in  outer  effects.^  It  is  an  inner  difference,  the  differ- 
ence of  intent.  I  wilfully  turned  from  my  ideal,  became 
faithless,  and  so  struck  a  blow  at  the  moral  constitution  of 
the  universe.  How  does  this  affect  the  sinner,  his  repent- 
ance and  hope  of  forgiveness  ?  What  can  undo  this  deed  ? 
Now,  it  is  true  ^  that  this  sinful  deed  may  be  the  means 
of  enlightenment,  and  that  others,  especially  those  whom 
the  sinner  has  wronged  and  betrayed,  may  so  use  it  that 
through  their  creative  deeds  they  may  bring  good  out  of 
evil.  We  all  know  such  noble  spirits  who  in  all  gentle- 
ness, long  suffering,  patience,  and  courage  bear  the  wrongs 
of  others,  give  their  lives  to  redeem  them,  and  by  their 
deeds  create  good  out  of  wrong  and  bring  new  life  to  the 
community.  So  the  sinner  may  rejoice  that  in  God's 
hands  his  sinful  selfhood  has  become,  as  it  were,  an  in- 

iMore  than  this  even.  A  man  may  be  a  good  citizen  in  all  outer 
respects  and  he  may  plan  to  do  good  public  service,  and  yet  in  his  in- 
dividual private  life  he  may  be  a  sinner.  For  instance,  in  the  third  cir- 
cle of  hell  Dante  asks  Ciacco  after  some  acquaintances  of  his  who  had 
"set  their  minds  on  doing  good,"  "  che  a  ben  fa  posca  gl'  ingegni,"  as 
we  surmise,  in  a  pubhc  way  — 

"  dimini  ove  sono,  e  fa  ch'  io  li  conosca : 
che  gran  disio  mi  stringe  di  sapere, 
se  il  ciel  gh  addolcia  o  1'  inferno  gli  attosca." 

E  quegli :  "  Ei  son  tra  le  anime  piil  nere ; 
diversa  colpa  giu  gli  aggrava  al  fondo : 
se  tanto  soendi  gh  potrai  vedere." 

That  is,  the  spirit  replies  to  Dante's  question  that  these 

"  Are  amongst  the  blackest  spirits ;  a  different  crime  weighs  them 
downwards  to  the  bottom ;  shouldst  thou  descend  so  far,  thou  mayest 
see  them." 

2  See  Professor  Josiah  Royce  in  !'The  Problem  of  Christianity," 
Vol.  I,  Chapters  III,  V,  VI. 


72  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

strument  for  greater  good  in  the  world  than  could  have 
been  possible  except  through  his  wrongdoing. 

But  in  such  an  atonement  the  sinner  himself  has  no 
active  part.  Is  the  sinner,  then,  redeemed  from  his  sin, 
if  redeemed  he  be  at  all,  by  Divine  Grace  incarnate  in 
others?  Has  he  no  personal  responsibility  in  the  matter? 
Must  not  his  redemption  rest  in  part  (though  surely  in 
part  only)  on  his  own  shoulders? 

''What  must  be  done  now?"  ^  Raskolinkoff  asks  of 
Sonia,  to  whom  he  has  confessed  his  crime. 

' '  What  must  be  done  ?  Rise  —  go  this  very  moment  to 
the  nearest  public  place,  prostrate  yourself,  kiss  the  earth 
you  have  stained,  proclaim  at  the  top  of  your  voice  to  the 
passers-by,  '  I  am  a  murderer '  and  God  will  give  you  peace 
again. " 

''You  wish  me  to  go  to  the  galleys,  then,  Sonia ;  is  it  not 
so?" 

"You  must  make  atonement  so  that  you  may  be  re- 
deemed thereby." 

The  answer  to  our  question  depends  upon  an  under- 
standing of  the  meaning  of  repentance.  What,  then,  let 
us  ask,  is  the  nature  of  repentance  at  its  inmost  heart? 
"Except  ye  repent,"  said  the  Master,  "ye  cannot  be  born 
again."  The  question  now  becomes  —  What  does  it 
mean  to  be  born  again  ?  Does  it  not  mean  to  have  become 
an  entirely  new  man,  and  so  one  who  can  be  taken  back 
as  the  lost  sheep  into  the  fold,  or  like  the  prodigal  son  to  a 
place  in  the  kingdom  ?  It  means,  that  is,  that  the  sinner 
has  become  so  transformed  that  he  can  be  received  once 
more  as  a  member  of  the  social  group  or  community. 

Now,  if  in  all  truthfulness  of  soul  a  man  who  has  been 
a  sinner  can  say,  "I  hate  that  deed  of  mine,  and  know  as 
well  as  I  know  anything  that  were  the  temptation  again 
present  to  me,  I  would  not  commit  that  sin  now, "  such  a 
man  is  worthy  of  forgiveness. 

In  one  of  George  Meredith's  novels,  there  i^  an  interest- 

*  Dostoieffsky,  "Crime  and  Punishment." 


UNIVEKSAL  ELEMENTS   OF  RELIGIOUS   EXPERIENCE      73 

ing  instance  of  a  case  where  forgiveness  was  withheld  by 
the  heroine  from  the  hero,  who  had  deeply  wronged  her, 
and  at  the  last  one's  sympathy  is  almost  transferred  from 
Corinthia  Jane  to  the  selfish  Fleetwood.  She  seems  hard 
and  unforgiving,  but  she  knows  in  truth  that  Fleetwood 
has  not  really  renounced  his  old  pride  and  self-will;  he 
has  not  really  been  born  again  into  a  manhood  of  unselfish 
love  and  humi],ity. 

''Try  what  repentance  can?    What  can  it  not? 
Yet  what  can  it,  when  one  cannot  repent?  "  ^ 

How  far,  then,  can  a  forgiven  sinner  be  reconciled  to 
his  own  sinful  deed?  Surely  he  can  never  outlive  the 
sorrow  for  that  deed  which  wrecked  another  l^fe  or  perhaps 
a  whole  community,  and  which  was  a  denial  of  his  own 
true  selfhood  and  of  God.  This  deed  of  his  has  been  the 
cause  of  tragedy  in  the  world,  and  whose  sorrow,  remorse, 
and  anguish  can  be  as  great  as  that  of  the  repentant  sinner 
when  in  the  light  of  the  ^'new  Kfe"  he  comes  to  behold  his 
sin  in  all  its  enormity,  blackness,  and  treachery?  But, 
may  not  the  sinner  himself  get  insight  from  the  depths 
of  such  anguish  which  shall  lead  on  his  own  part  to  the 
creative  will  and  the  atoning  deed?  May  he  not  make 
good  the  wrong  by  a  life's  devotion,  by  a  boundless  com- 
passion, by  love  that  never  faileth,  by  deeds  whose  su- 
preme power  is  made  possible  by  that  very  evil  ?  For  the 
sinner  in  his  redeemed  state  is,  as  it  were,  another  man 
(a  new  man)  than  the  man  who  sinned,  and  so  his  relation 
to  his  sin  becomes  other,  while  at  the  same  time,  as  a  doer 
of  the  deed  and  through  the  remorse  and  sorrow  which 
are  peculiarly  his  own,  the  insight,  too,  of  the  repentant 
sinner  may  have  special  power  and  efficacy. 

But  having  said  so  much  about  the  forgiveness  of  sin 
and  the  reconcilement  of  the  sinner  to  the  community 
and  to  the  universe,  we  still  have  to  ask  whether  such  a 
thing  as  voluntary  (or  real)  sin  actually  exists. 
1 "  Hamlet,"  Act  III,  Scene  iii. 


74  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

It  is  what  has  been  called  the  submerged  class  which 
"sins"  most  against  the  outward  requirements  of  society. 
Yet  when  we  consider  the  inheritance  and  the  environ- 
ment of  this  class,  we  wonder  that  there  are  to  be  found 
among  them  so  many  as  good  as  they  are.  These  men,  we 
say,  are  not  themselves  the  sinners.  Is  it,  then,  only  the 
educated,  the  enlightened,  the  fairly  prosperous  people 
amongst  whom  the  sinners  are  to  be  found?  Yet  these 
have  their  own  special  temptations  and  difficulties  from 
the  environment,  and  often  a  particularly  difficult  inheri- 
tance of  nerves,  of  sensitiveness  and  timidity,  of  hesitancy 
and  of  all  kinds  of  inhibitions,^  and  'Ho  him  who  knoweth 
to  do  good  and  doeth  it  not,  to  him  it  is  sin." 

Sin,  as  we  have  seen,  depends  upon  the  recognition  and 
choice  of  an  ideal,  or,  as  we  may  say,  of  the  ''best."  But 
this  is  an  universal  experience  in  a  normal  man  of  some 
stability  of  character  and  of  self-control.  The  corollary, 
then,  of  the  fact  that  every  man  is  capable  of  having,  and 
commonly  has,  an  ideal  of  some  sort,  is  that  every  normal 
man  is  capable  of  becoming  a  sinner.  Logically,  the  fact 
of  sin  demands  freedom  of  the  will,  but  the  question  is 
sure  to  arise  how  far  the  individual  man  can  be  free  either 
biologically  or  psychologically,  since  we  know  his  relation- 
ship to  and  dependence  upon  the  social  milieu,  and  since 
biological  science  and  medicine  have  revealed  the  intimate 
interrelationship  of  mind  and  body.  As  we  shall  see  in 
the  sequel,  the  relation  between  mind  and  body  is  a  per- 
plexing one  and  remains  a  good  deal  of  a  mystery.^  The 
criminal  class  may  be  divided  into  two  types.  First,  the 
physically  degenerate;  and,  second,  the  habitual  crim- 
inal. One  of  the  first  type,  we  do  not  count  as  free,  but 
rather  a  case  for  the  hospital  or  the  asylum.  The  other 
type  of  the  criminal  class  consists  of  those  who  have  been 
hardened,  stunted,  led  astray  by  a  cruel  and  hostile  en- 

*  See,  for  this  type  of  sinner,  John  Bunyan's autobiography,  ''Grace 
Abounding  to  the  Chief  of  Sinners." 

2  Chapter  IV  continued,  '*  The  Inner  and  the  Outer." 


UNIVERSAL   ELEMENTS   OF   RELIGIOUS   EXPERIENCE      75 

vironment  both  material  and  social.  These  men  have 
come  to  feel  the  hand  of  the  world  against  them,  conse- 
quently they  have  become  social  rebels.  But  given  a 
friend,  and  a  kindly,  stimulating  environment,  such  men 
may  be,  and  usually  are,  redeemed. 

Where,  between  these  two  classes,  shall  we  place  the 
true  sinners?  Bunyan,  for  example,  belongs  to  the  neu- 
rasthenic type.  He  writes  ^^he  is  possessed  by  the 
Devil  and  whole  floods  of  blasphemies  pour  in  upon  his 
soul."  '^Sin  bubbles  out  of  his  heart  as  water  from  the 
fountain."  To  which  of  the  above  classes  is  he  nearer, 
or  is  he  a  ^^true"  sinner?  Bunyan  recovers  from  his 
neurasthenic  tendencies,  and  his  sin  likewise  disappears. 
His  healing  seems  to  come  from  without.  After  his  first 
conversion  from  the  habit  of  blasphemy,  he  writes  ''how 
it  came  to  pass :  I  know  not.  It  was  a  great  wonder  to 
myself  to  observe  it.  It  might  have  been  an  angel  that 
came  upon  me."  As  in  Bunyan,  so  in  Paul,  in  Augustine, 
in  the  hero  of  ''Crime  and  Punishment,"  we  find  a  more  or 
less  abnormal,  psycho-physical  condition.  Is  all  sin  so 
accompanied?  Then  what  becomes  of  freedom?  Must 
we  abandon  our  inner  criterion  of  sin? 

Professor  Starbuck,  after  his  research  work  in  regard  to 
the  sense  of  sin,  concludes  that  the  cause  underlying  the 
sense  of  sin  is  found  "in  part  in  certain  temperamental  and 
organic  conditions,  and  sin  should  not  be  considered  simply 
a  spiritual  fact,"  and  Ribot  says:  "To  produce  a  great 
moral  or  intellectual  effort,  the  appropriate  nerve  centers 
must  be  able  to  produce  intense  work  over  and  over  again 
and  must  not  be  quickly  exhausted  or  slow  to  repair 
losses."  ^ 

The  cure  for  sin,  according  to  this  theory,  would  depend 
upon  the  building  up  of  cerebral  tissue,  thus  producing 
change  of  career.  This  would  reduce  the  problem  of  sin 
to  the  general  problem  of  evil,  and  our  question  would 
become :   Why,  in  a  moral  world,  are  these  things  so  ? 

»  Ribot,  "Diseases  of  the  Will." 


I 


76  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Our  criterion  must,  if  true,  interpret  the  facts.  It 
must,  however,  also  be  logical.  We  cannot  take  this  fact 
by  itself  without  regard  to  the  rest  of  the  universe.  Psy- 
cho-physical parallelism  has  been  suggested  as  the  solu- 
tion, but  psycho-physical  parallelism  leaves  an  unbridged 
chasm  which  in  our  direct  experience  we  do  not  find.  For 
in  experience,  mind  and  body  are  intimately  connected. 
If,  following  Aristotle,  we  should  take  as  the  criterion  of 
the  moral-normal,  or  the  tjrpical  man,  one  whose  activities 
conform  to  reason  and  are  directed  to  an  end  of  ends,  we 
are  on  the  ground  where  the  sinner,  in  the  logical  sense,  is 
to  be  discovered.  To  recognize  an  ideal  or  end  of  ends,  is 
to  recognize  a  higher  and  a  lower  self.  The  moral-normal 
contains  the  possibility  of  sin.  The  sinner  turns  volun- 
tarily from  his  ideal  to  follow  the  path  of  least  resistance, 
and  if  it  is  often  found  that  the  sinful  consciousness  is 
governed  by  ^'insistent  ideas ^^  which  are  accompanied  by 
abnormal  psycho-physical  conditions,  may  it  not  be 
that  the  ''insistent  idea^^  leading  to  the  sinful  act,  itself 
induces  the  accompanying  abnormal  physical  condition? 
In  ''healthy  minds,"  says  Dr.  Cowles,  "are  found  acci- 
dental, irregular  coordinations  of  idea  and  feeling  which 
indulged  or  otherwise  fixed  by  habit  are  the  germs  and 
often  growths  which  are  not  degenerate,  but  spring  up 
more  readily  in  neurasthenic  soil."  The  fixing  of  the  idea, 
in  the  first  instance,  is  the  point  where  freedom  resides ; 
having  become  fixed,  the  idea  may  take  possession  of  the 
whole  life  and  result  at  last  in  imperative,  involuntary 
action  and  accompanying  disease.^ 

If  we  accept  a  moral  universe,  we  seem  bound  to  accept 
the  fact  of  sin  (in  the  logical  sense).  The  question  of  sin 
is  not,  in  the  last  analysis,  one  for  biology  or  psycho- 
physics.  It  is  a  question  of  meaning  and  intent  —  a 
metaphysical  problem.  Whether  or  not  abnormal  phys- 
ical conditions,  like  abouha,  or  like  states  of  excessive 
impulsion,  invariably  accompany  the  sinful  consciousness 
^  Arthur  Dimmesdale,  in  "The  Scarlet  Letter." 


UNIVERSAL   ELEMENTS   OF  RELIGIOUS   EXPERIENCE      77 

of  this  type,  is  a  question  for  the  nerve  specialist  and 
psychologist. 

But,  granted  that  our  wills  are  limited  by  such  condi- 
tions, limitations  may  still  turn  out  to  be  the  chief  stepping 
stones  to  spiritual  achievement  and  such  necessity  the  law 
of  reason.  This  appears  to  be  the  meaning  of  the  Pro- 
logue to  " Faust'';  or,  as  Browning  puts  it:  — 

"Let  a  man  contend  to  the  uttermost 
For  his  life's  set  prize,  be  it  what  it  will 

"  The  sin  I  impute  to  each  frustrate  ghost 
Was  the  unlit  lamp  and  the  ungirt  loin." 

In  other  words,  whatever  its  psycho-physical  accompani- 
ments, the  fact  of  sin  is  a  spiritual  fact  and  the  limitations 
of  the  environment,  in  a  spiritual  world,  may  themselves 
be  essential  elements  to  greater  spirituality. 

We  know  now  what  we  should  mean  by  sin.  Whether 
or  not  actual  sin  exists,  it  is  not  easy  in  any  particular 
case  to  say.  There  are  some  hardened  evil  doers,  like 
Shakespeare's  lago  and  Stevenson's  Master  of  Ballantrae, 
who  appear  to  be  cases  of  wilful,  voluntary,  detestable 
sin.  In  the  lowest  circles  of  hell  Dante  has  placed  the 
hypocrites,  the  fraudulent  of  every  class,  and  in  the  deep- 
est pit  of  perpetual  ice,  the  proud,  who,  like  Lucifer, 
thought  to  make  themselves  equal  to  God,  and  the  traitors. 

Whether  or  not  sin  in  its  special  and  logical  meaning 
exists  or  not,  we  know  that  the  consciousness  of  sin  exists. 
St.  Paul  and  St.  Augustine  and  the  evangelical  sects  have 
greatly  emphasized  this  sense  of  sin,  and  such  men  as 
Calvin  and  Jonathan  Edwards  have  sometimes,  perhaps 
artificially,  induced  it.  But  this  is  an  experience  which  is 
limited  to  no  special  period  of  history.  In  the  records  of 
the  mediaeval  mystics,  we  note  how  many  passed  through 
the  ''abyss"  and  experienced  the  ''dark  night  of  the  soul." 

This  consciousness  of  sin,  as  we  have  seen,  falls  into 
three  groups.     Can  we  limit  actual  sin  entirely  to  the 


78  THE    DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

second  group  ?  Though  this  tragic  fact  of  our  human  life 
is  about  us  everywhere,  its  appearance,  as  we  have  seen, 
is  most  complex  and  baffling.  It  seems  as  if  there  were 
borderland  cases  between  groups  1,  2,  and  3.  Yet,  be- 
tween good  and  evil,  sin  and  righteousness  in  themselves, 
there  is  a  sharp  line  of  cleavage.     It  either  is  or  is  not  sin. 

Once  more,  then,  let  us  consider  our  definition  of  sin 
with  reference  to  the  concrete  case.  Sin,  we  have  seen, 
is  not  in  the  outer  deed  but  in  the  intent  —  the  wilful  intent 
to  be  faithless  to  the  ideal.  It  is  because  the  harmful 
consequences  of  sin  are  so  great  that  it  is  difficult  to  be 
just  to  the  sinner  himself.  If  a  man  knew  the  full  conse- 
quences of  his  sinful  act,  or  quite  realized  at  the  time  he 
took  the  first  step  that  he  were  really  betraying  his  ideal, 
it  is  doubtful  if  there  would  be  many  sinners.  For  sin,  I 
think,  resides  at  that  little  point  of  failure  of  attention  to 
the  ideal  which  James  makes  the  sole  point  of  our  freedom 
of  will. 

The  young  man  who  abandons  for  one  evening  the  hard 
study  of  preparation  for  a  college  career,  to  pass  it  with  a 
fascinating  companion,  has  no  idea  that  that  one  evening 
is  going  to  be  fatal  to  the  possibility  of  his  college  career, 
perhaps  to  his  whole  life.  When  he  decides  to  go,  he  has 
no  intention  of  forsaking  and  betraying  his  ideal  more 
than  temporarily.  He  desires  to  go,  and  then  makes  ex- 
cuses to  himself  as  to  why  he  should  go,  and  before  he 
knows  it,  the  fatal  step  is  taken.  So  the  bank  clerk  who 
takes  money  from  the  bank  to  meet,  perhaps,  the  extrava- 
gances of  his  household,  intends  and  expects  to  pay  the 
money  back  before  any  harm  is  done. 

The  real  sin  is  in  lack  of  concentration.  That  is,  it  is 
found  in  the  moment  when  a  man  ceases  to  hold  on  to  his 
ideal  or  consciously  chosen  purpose.  Sin  is  in  dallying 
with  temptation.  We  have  forgotten  our  own  ideal. 
Later,  unrestrained  impulses,  a  flood  of  passion,  tendencies 
which  have  become  habits,  once  set  in  motion,  are  too 
strong;   the  man  is  whirled  away  on  the  current  to  the 


UNIVERSAL  ELEMENTS   OF   RELIGIOUS   EXPERIENCE      79 

committing  of  the  fatal  deed.     The  result  is  out  of  pro- 
portion to  the  initiation  of  the  deed  in  which  sin  began. 

It  is  just  at  the  one  little  point  described  above  that 
there  is  sin.  Yet  sin  is  an  awful  thing.  Just  at  this 
point  (or  possibly  a  succession  of  points)  a  man  could 
have  done  otherwise.  It  is  a  wilful  choosing  to  forget. 
He  does  not  fully  realize  that  he  is  betraying  his  cause. 
Love  reconciles  and  takes  back  the  sinner,  because  it 
realizes  that  the  sin  —  though  in  itself  as  betrayal,  so 
awful  a  thing  —  was  not  in  conscious  intent  equal  to  the 
results  or  evil  caused.  This  is  part  of  the  ijiscrutable 
tragedy  of  the  universe,  and  it  is  as  true  of  ignorance  as 
of  sin.  ^'Neither  do  I  condemn  thee.  Go,  and  sin  no 
more."  Yet,  I  think  we  must  conclude  that  there  is  such 
a  thing  as  real  sin.  And  yet,  in  truth,  this  deed  of  black- 
ness and  betrayal  may  be  transformed  into  glory,  and, 
for  such  a  transformation  to  be  complete,  we  must  believe 
the  insight  and  creative  will  of  the  sinner  himself  plays  a 
part,  if  but  a  small  one.  Without  divine  grace,  indeed, 
man  may  not  save  himself.  Yet  grace  demands  that  the 
individual  will  shall  cooperate.  ''The  only  way  to  get 
rid  of  a  past,"  says  Phillips  Brooks,  ''is  to  get  a  future  out 
of  it."  The  case  of  the  sinner  is  not  hopeless;  yet,  on 
the  other  hand,  he  may  not  give  up  either  in  complacency 
or  despair,  trusting  to  others  to  do  the  work  of  redemption 
for  him.  The  discipHne  of  his  sin  is  stern,  ascetic,  tragic. 
The  utmost  height  of  pure  devotion  will  not  be  too  much 
to  pay  in  atonement  and  redemption.  In  this,  his  own 
will  shall  have  its  part,  even  though  at  the  same  time  he 
says :  "Of  myself  I  am  nothing.  It  is  the  work  of  Divine 
Grace  in  me."  To  his  passionate  cry  of  Mea  culpa  comes 
the  response  from  the  community :  — 

"0  Lamb  of  God,  who  taketh  away  the  sios  of  the  world,  grant  us 
thy  peace." 

The  sinner  knows  that  his  own  task  is  an  endless  one, 
in  correspondence  with  the  consequences  of  the  guilty  deed 


80  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

itself  —  for  these  consequences,  unrecognized  perhaps,  go 
on  and  on  and  long  after  the  committing  of  the  deed 
when  the  sinner  believes  that  his  subsequent  life  has  fully- 
atoned  for  his  guilt,  in  some  hour  of  crisis  in  his  life  they 
return  to  avenge  themselves  upon  him.^  He  knows  that 
the  devotion  of  his  whole  life  '^and  more  lives  yet"  will 
not  be  too  great  a  sacrifice  to  pay  to  redeem  his  guilt. 
Yet,  though  his  task  is  endless  and  his  sorrow  and  anguish 
deep,  even  here  in  the  midst  of  sin  and  despair,  there 
must  be  found  something  of  that  essentially  religious 
attitude  which  we  call  acquiescence  and  faith.  The 
repentant  sinner  believes  that  the  stern  discipline  of  his 
repented  sin,  the  grief  and  harm  he  caused  to  the  com- 
munity which  he  betrayed,  even  the  very  blow  which  he 
struck  against  the  universe  itself,  shall,  somehow,  because 
of  that  world's  essential  spirituality,  redound  to  ^'a  more 
exceeding  weight  of  glory."  In  such  faith  and  such 
acquiescence,  he  finds  peace  for  his  stricken  spirit,  but 
never  a  cessation  of  his  own  earnest  and  active  endeavor 
in  every  possible  way  to  make  atonement. 

*  See,  e.g.f  Story  of  Bulstrode  in  George  Eliot's  "  Middlemarch." 


"  Visions  come  and  go, 
Shapes  of  resplendent  beauty  round  me  throng, 
From  angel  lips  I  seem  to  hear  the  flow 
Of  soft  and  holy  song. 

"  In  a  purer  clime 
My  being  fills  with  rapture  —  waves  of  thought 
Roll  in  upon  my  spirit  —  strains  sublime 
Break  over  me  unsought." 

—  Milton. 

"  Where  every  something  being  blent  together 
Turns  to  a  wild  of  nothing  save  of  joy, 
Expressed,  and  not  express'd." 

—  Shakespeake. 

"And  an  highway  shall  be  there  and  a  way,  and  it  shall  be  called 
the  way  of  holiness." 

—  Isaiah  35:  8. 


CHAPTER  III 
The  Way  of  Life  —  Its  Nature 

Taking  as  our  premise  the  basic  fact  of  the  ideality  of 
religion,  we  have  seen  that  there  are  certain  true  proposi- 
tions concerning  religious  experience,  and  we  have  seen 
further  that  these  assertions  imply  some  negations  in  re- 
gard to  religious  experience  as  a  whole,  or,  —  as  we  may 
more  concretely  express  it,  —  they  involve  some  elimina- 
tions from  the  field  of  religious  experience.  Granted  the 
ideality  of  religion,  we  have  seen  that  religious  experience 
is,  or  may  be,  a  universal  experience,  yet  the  field  itself 
is  limited.  It  does  not  cover  the  whole  of  hmnan  life. 
We  have  found  that  the  essence  of  this  experience  can 
be  expressed  logically  as  a  triadic  relation,  that  is,  a  re- 
lation between  two  terms  together  with  a  third,  a  medi- 
ating term.  Two  of  these  universal  elements  of  religion 
we  considered  in  the  last  chapter.  In  the  present  chapter, 
we  shall  begin  an  analysis  of  the  third  term  or  process. 

The  eliminations  of  which  we  have  spoken  above,  while 
they  simpHfy  our  problem  in  regard  to  the  nature  of  the 
religious  experience,  still  leave  us  with  many  perplexities 
on  our  hands  in  regard  to  the  essence  of  religion.  These 
perplexities  appear  at  once  when  we  begin  our  examina- 
tion of  the  third  element  in  the  total  of  religious  ex- 
perience. 

The  two  universal  elements  of  our  second  chapter  do 
not  completely  express  the  content  of  the  religious  con- 
sciousness. It  is  not  enough  to  have  the  experience  of 
incompleteness  and  the  dark  abyss  of  sin,  and  over  against 
this  the  great  fight  of  an  ideal  world  shining  off  on  a  far 
horizon.     Somehow,  if  man  is  to  win  salvation,  these  two 

83 


84  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

elements  must  be  brought  together.  The  great  light  must 
shine  in  man's  heart  and  transform  its  darkness ;  the  new 
life  must  come  down  and  dwell  on  the  earth.  How  shall 
this  be?  Many  and  various  have  been  the  ways  in  which 
man  has  actually  won  salvation,  —  that  is,  —  as  to  the 
particular  embodiment,  the  ways  are  countless,  yet  they 
have  one  general  form.  It  is  by  a  mediating  process,  a 
uniting  term,  a  method,  an  undertaking,  a  way  of  life. 

The  discussion  of  the  foregoing  chapter,  then,  has  shown 
us  that  religious  experience  consists,  as  to  its  form,  of  a 
triad  of  elements  which  in  a  general  way  we  may  describe 
as :  (1st)  a  state  of  incompleteness,  of  dissatisfaction,  of 
need,  of  sin ;  (2d)  an  ideal,  a  goal,  a  realization  of  salva- 
tion ;  and  (3d)  a  way  of  attaiiunent,  a  way  of  salvation, 
or  a  way  of  life. 

In  the  different  historical  religions,  this  universal  form 
of  religious  experience  has,  of  course,  received  various 
particular  colorings. 

For  instance,  in  Buddhism  the  triad  is  expressed  as 
(1)  the  endless  cycle  of  reincarnations,  (2)  Nirvana, 
and  (3)  the  Pathy  the  threefold  path  of  purity,  self- 
abnegation,  and  enlightenment. 

^In  Orphic  religion,  the  triad-form  appears:  (1st)  as 
the  need  to  escape  from  ^Hhe  sorrowful,  weary  wheel"  of 
existence;  (2d)  the  attainment  of  divine  life  and  con- 
sequent immortaUty ;  and  (3d)  the  means  thereto,  which 
consisted  (1st)  of  rites  of  abstinence  and  purification  — 
those  ancient  Bacchic  rites  to  which  Orphism  gave  a  new 
and  spiritual  significance,  —  and  (2d)  of  a  practical  effort 
on  the  part  of  the  initiate  for  purity  of  life.  In  Christian 
experience,  these  elements  are  usually  described  as: 
(1st)  a  state  of  sin,  (2d)  salvation,  and  (3d)  a  process 
of  redemption ;  or,  again,  as  (1)  imperfection,  (2)  right- 
eousness or  holiness,  and  (3)  a  way  of  life  —  an  ^'imitatio 
Christi''  —  (^*I  am  the  way,  the  truth,  and  the  life")  — 

^For  a  discussion  of  Orphism  see  Miss  Jane  Harrison's  "Prole- 
gomena to  Greek  Religion." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   NATURE  85 

either  through  an  acceptance  of  Christ  and  a  self-surrender 
to  him  as  a  personal  leader,  a  mediator  and  saviour,  and 
a  mystical  union  through  this  acceptance  which  is  sym- 
bolized in  the  rites  of  the  church;  or  else  through  an 
effort  to  live  a  Christ-like  life  of  heavenly  love  (ix.  love 
of  God  and  of  the  neighbor,  —  the  Christian  community), 
made  real  in  devoted  service.  In  short,  religion  is  not 
merely  a  longing  or  a  striving  for  an  ideal  goal.  It  is  also 
a  faith  that  the  goal  is  real  and  can  be  attained. 

Religious  experience  seeks  salvation.  But  how,  when, 
and  where?  This  leads  us  to  a  special  consideration  of 
the  third  element  of  a  universal  religious  experience,  — 
the  bond  or  process,  —  which  becomes  the  most  important 
element  in  the  concrete  religious  life.  In  short,  religion 
is  a  practice.  Now,  logically  speaking,  this  third  element 
—  the  tie  which  unites  the  two  contrasting  elements  (i.e, 
the  need  and  the  goal  of  salvation)  in  one  whole  which 
we  call  religious  experience  —  is  one  and  simple ;  and  as 
the  way  of  salvation  or  a  means  of  attainment,  also,  it  is 
one.  It  is  a  way  of  life.  Thus,  theoretically,  the  primary 
opposition  of  the  form  of  reUgious  experience  is  overcome. 
But  religious  experience  is  not  a  theory ;  it  is  life,  an  actual 
experience,  and  when  we  consider  concretely  this  third 
element  of  a  universal  religious  experience,  the  bond  or 
process  itself  breaks  up  into  a  series  of  oppositions,  as  a 
ray  of  white  Ught  striking  a  prism  breaks  up  into  all  the 
colors  of  the  rainbow. 

We  find  the  following  series  of  oppositions:  — 

First,  as  to  the      [  1.  Mystical,  as  opposed  to  ethical, 
nature  of  the 
spiritual  life.      [  2.  Individual,  as  opposed  to  social. 

Second,  a^  to         l^'  ^'^^^'  ^«  ^PP^'^^  *^  ^^"*- 
its  source.  I  ^'  N^^^^^i^y  ^^^  Freedom. 

I  3.  The  Inner  and  the  Outer. 


Third,  as  to 
its  form. 


1.  The  Temporal  and  the  Eternal. 

2.  The  Dynamic  and  the  Static. 

3.  The  Many  and  the  One. 


86  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

It  seems  impossible  to  identify  ^^the  way  of  life"  with 
any  one  of  the  elements  in  these  oppositions,  or  with  any 
one  of  the  oppositions  themselves.  We  can  see  that  the 
various  oppositions  are  more  or  less  related.  They  seem 
phases  of  one  experience;  yet  it  is  difficult  to  say  which 
opposition  is  the  deeper,  and  from  which  one  as  starting 
point  we  might  deduce  the  others.  For  instance,  an 
ethical  experience  seems  on  the  whole  to  be  a  social  ex- 
perience; while  a  mystical  experience  seems  individual. 
Yet  in  primitive  religious  dances  and  festivals,  and  in  all 
public  worship,  there  are  elements  of  social  experience 
which  are  aesthetic  rather  than  ethical ;  and  on  the  other 
hand,  in  the  moral  consciousness  of  a  religious  reformer 
and  leader  we  have  an  experience  which  is  so  far  above 
the  level  of  society  as  to  be  in  some  respects  a  solitary, 
individual  experience.  Again,  a  mystical  experience  is 
rather  anti-social  and  individual,  and  yet  its  aim  appears 
to  be  the  losing  of  individuality  in  the  life  of  God,  —  the 
All. 

These  various  forms  of  religious  experience  conflict  more 
or  less  with  one  another  and  give  rise  to  different  values ; 
yet  all  are  elements  in  a  total  religious  experience,  and  as 
such  demand  reconciliation.  Is  it  possible,  we  ask,  to 
overcome  these  various  oppositions  and  to  unite  the  dif- 
ferent values  in  one  perfect  whole  of  experience,  as  in  one 
perfect  world-crystal  ? 

Our  next  undertaking,  then,  must  be  a  consideration 
of  the  varieties  of  religious  experience. 

The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience 

In  the  present  chapter,  I  shall  consider  particularly  the 
essence  or  nature  of  the  spiritual  life  and  shall  begin  some- 
what arbitrarily  by  a  consideration  of  the  opposition 
between  the  mystical  (aesthetic)  religious  consciousness 
and  the  ethical  religious  consciousness. 

Because  this  opposition  in  religious  experience  appears 
so  fundamental,  and  because  it  has  a  far  wider  range  than 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS  NATURE  87 

the  special  field  of  religion,  it  seems  worth  while  to  examine 
it  rather  closelj''  and  broadly,  i.e,  to  consider  it  as  it  touches 
upon  other  fields. 

The  Mystical  Experience  as  Opposed  to  the  Ethical  or 
Practical  Experience.  —  This  opposition  exists  outside  the 
special  field  of  religion  as  the  opposition  between  the  ethi- 
cal and  aesthetic  consciousness  or  value,  or  as  the  opposi- 
tion between  the  practical  and  active  and  the  meditative 
and  receptive  consciousness.  The  mystic  is  one  who  may 
be  called,  as  James  has  called  him,  a  religious  genius.  His 
experience  of  enlightenment,  his  sense  of  a  special  revela- 
tion, his  recognition  of  salvation,  come  to  him  very  much 
as  his  imaginative  creations  come  to  the  genius  in  the  realm 
of  art.  As  this  opposition  appears  in  actual  life  it  is  in  part 
a  matter  of  temperament,  and  these  two  differing  ideals  or 
values  give  zest  and  variety  to  Ufe.  Yet,  also,  they  seem 
to  be  at  the  bottom  of  many  of  its  conflicts  and  tragedies. 

In  '^Wuthering  Heights,"  Emily  Bronte  has  sketched 
these  opposing  ideals  as  they  exist  for  the  active  and 
passive  temperaments  of  two  children :  — 

"Linton  said  the  pleasantest  manner  of  spending  a  hot  July  day- 
was  lying  from  morning  till  evening  in  the  middle  of  the  moors,  with 
the  bees  humming  dreamily  about  among  the  flowers,  and  the  larks 
singing  high  up  overhead,  and  the  blue  sky  and  bright  sun  shining 
steadily  and  cloudlessly.  That  was  his  most  perfect  idea  of  heaven's 
happiness.  Mine  was  rocking  in  a  rustling  green  tree,  with  a  west 
wind  blowing  and  bright  white  clouds  flitting  rapidly  above;  and 
not  only  larks,  but  throstles,  and  blackbirds  and  linnets  and  cockoos, 
pouring  out  music  on  every  side,  and  the  moors  seen  at  a  distance 
broken  into  cool,  dusky  dells,  but  close  by  great  swells  of  long  grass 
undulating  in  waves  to  the  breeze;  and  the  woods  and  sounding 
water,  and  the  whole  world  awake  and  wild  with  joy.  He  wanted 
all  to  lie  in  an  ecstasy  of  peace ;  I  wanted  all  to  sparkle  and  dance  in  a 
glorious  jubilee."  ^ 

It  is  proverbial  that  men  of  aesthetic  genius  are  hard  to 
live  with,  and  this  applies  more  or  less  to  the  artistic  or 
the  specialized  type  of  temperament  generally  even  when 

*  Emily  Bronte,  "  Wuthering  Heights." 


88  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

not  a  case  of  genius.  Also  it  is  sometimes  said  that  genius 
is  a  law  unto  itself  and  cannot  submit  to  those  conventions 
and  regulations  which  seem  necessary  to  social  intercourse. 
On  the  other  hand,  there  are  those  who  vehemently  de- 
nounce genius  which  either  goes  its  own  way  regardless, 
or  feeds  on  other  lives  and  makes  them  suffer.  People 
sometimes  speak  in  severe  criticism  of  even  so  great  a 
genius  as  Tolstoy  for  his  unpractical  ideals  and  his  lack  of 
consideration  of  the  point  of  view  of  his  family. 

Thus  the  opposition  and  the  conflict  between  the 
aesthetic  and  the  ethical  has  a  wider  range  than  the  re- 
ligious sphere  and  appears  as  the  tragedy  of  genius,  a 
tragedy  either  to  himself  or  to  others.  The  genius  eats 
his  heart  out  alone,  unrecognized,  or  misunderstood,  or, 
if  he  seeks  to  enter  into  social  relations,  it  is  all  too  prob- 
able that  he  will  cause  others  sorrow,  and  that  they  in 
their  turn  will  thwart  his  expression  of  his  genius  and  his 
inner  life.  Or,  if  there  be  no  external  pain  and  tragedy, 
there  is  possibly  an  even  greater  one  in  his  own  heart, 
when  social  duty  and  affections  draw  him  one  way,  and 
the  interest  of  his  own  temperament  in  another.  (Shelley 
might  be  taken  as  illustration.)  And  all  this  is  increased 
when  conventions  and  customs  make  the  decision  espe- 
cially difficult,  as  in  the  case  of  women.  Mrs.  Browning 
has  told  us  something  of  this  problem  in  '^  Aurora  Leigh,'' 
and  a  recent  work  of  fiction  ^  has  taken  it  up  again. 

Although  I  have  heard  highly  intellectual  women  say 
that  they  had  no  idea  what  this  problem  of  the  moral  as 
opposed  to  the  aesthetic,  the  social  as  opposed  to  the  indi- 
vidual experience,  meant,  yet  I  fancy  the  conflict  does  come 
home  rather  often  to  the  young  woman  about  to  graduate 
from  college,  who  is  no  genius,  perhaps,  but  yet  a  case  of 
specialized  temperament.     I  think  of  one  such  college 

1  May  Sinclair,  "The  Creators."  It  appears  in  much  of  the  so-oalled 
feminist  literature  of  the  last  few  years. 

See,  also,  "The  Man  and  the  Militant,"  Alice  Brown,  Atlantic 
Monthly,  August,  1913. 


I 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   NATURE  89 

graduate,  one  ''all  spirit,  fire,  and  dew,'^  who  devoting 
her  life  to  the  children  of  the  immigrant  has  little  time  or 
strength  left  for  the  poetry  and  philosophy  she  used  to 
dream  of,  and  who  bravely  contents  herself  with  the 
thought  that  she  is  helping  these,  often  gifted,  foreign 
children  to  do  better  work  than  she  would  ever  have  done. 
Or,  I  think  of  another  highly  gifted  young  woman  whose 
home  in  a  western  city  is  just  one  of  the  many  centres  for 
the  development  and  culture  of  the  great  West,  but  she, 
with  all  her  own  home  work  to  do,  has  not  sufficient 
physical  vitality  for  the  aesthetic  or  intellectual  life  which 
she  so  dearly  loved.  Devoted  wife  and  mother  as  well  as 
ardent  social-service  worker  as  she  is,  it  is  not  selfishness 
which  makes  her  long  at  times  to  lead  her  own  life,  but  the 
call  of  something  stronger  than  herself,  the  call  of  her  spe- 
cial temperament  and  individuality.  At  the  same  time,  on 
the  other  hand,  no  one  is  without  the  sense  of  social  bonds 
and  relationships  and  the  claims  of  immediate  friends  and 
family ;  in  our  day,  even  the  needs  of  the  whole  world  make 
their  moving  appeal  to  the  sensitive  consciousness.  It 
may  be  that,  morally,  a  decision  in  either  direction  is  good 
enough,  if  steadfastly  pursued ;  but  this  is  not  the  whole 
story.  Whichever  way  the  choice  is  made  there  is  bound 
to  be  a  sense  of  limitation  and  pain.  Sunt  lachrymce 
rerum. 

Our  opposition,  then,  is  very  real  and  concrete.  In 
the  special  sphere  of  religion  it  is  often  spoken  of  as  the 
opposition  between  the  Martha  and  Mary  types  of  char- 
acter. In  the  gospel  story,  a  supper  was  given  to  Jesus, 
and  Martha  was  busy  serving,  but  Mary  sat  at  His  feet 
and  drank  in  the  words  of  life.  Then  Martha  bade  Jesus 
chide  Mary  because  she  did  not  help  her  serve.  In  another 
story,  a  woman  brings  an  alabaster  box  of  precious  oint- 
ment and  anoints  the  feet  of  the  Master,  and  Judas,  one 
of  the  disciples,  complains :  ''Why  was  not  this  ointment 
sold  and  given  to  the  poor?"  And  even  so  it  is  to-day. 
On  the  one  hand,  it  is  said:  "What  can  a  man  give  in 


90  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

exchange  for  his  own  soul?'^  And  on  the  other:  ''Man 
should  not  consider  his  own  soul,  as  the  mediaeval  monks 
did,  but  rather  forgetting  self,  minister  to  the  souls  and 
bodies  of  others."  The  practice  of  preventive  medicine, 
for  instance,  it  is  said,  may  be  the  best  sort  of  religion. 

It  is  almost  impossible  to  consider  this  opposition  of 
the  mystical  and  practical  religious  consciousness  with- 
out passing  over  into  the  other  opposition,  —  that  of  the 
individual  and  the  social  type  of  religious  consciousness. 
The  mystic's  concern  is  the  inner  life.  ''The  Kingdom, '* 
said  Tauler,  "is  seated  in  the  inmost  recesses  of  the  spirit." 
In  fact,  the  deeply  aesthetic  religious  consciousness  seems 
ever  to  have  loved  and  sought  soHtude,  as  have  also  done 
the  poets. 

Consider,  for  example,  the  hermits  in  the  wilderness 
and  the  monks  in  their  cloisters.  Moses  seeks  the  holy 
mountain,  and  the  Psalmist  the  courts  of  the  temple; 
Jesus  went  alone  to  the  mountain  to  pray ;  and  to  the 
Buddha  it  was  the  last  temptation  not  to  proclaim  the 
doctrine  to  uncomprehending  ears.  For  the  mystical 
(aesthetic)  religious  consciousness,  whose  interest,  as  we 
have  said,  is  the  inner  life,  this  love  of,  and  even  neces- 
sity for,  solitude  seems  perfectly  natural.  For  it  is 
through  concentration,  meditation,  and  trances  that  the 
mystic  enters  this  inner  kingdom,  or,  like  St.  Paul  is 
caught  up  into  highest  heaven,  hears  unearthly  voices, 
and  beholds  visions  of  another  world.  But  the  active, 
practical  consciousness  calls  to  the  mystic  to  come  down 
from  his  mountain  or  out  of  his  cell  and  take  up  the 
work  of  the  world.  "What  I  will  you  fiddle  while  Rome 
is  burning?"  —  for  does  it  not  reduce  to  this  in  the  end? 
Hear  "the  bitter  cry  of  the  children."  Remember: 
"Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it  not  unto  one  of  the  least  of  these, 
ye  did  it  not  to  me."  But  the  mystic  answers:  "Why 
should  I  come  down?  Are  we  not  on  a  quest  for  reality 
and  the  highest  good?  I  have  found  God."  And  why 
should  the  mystic  seek  further?    Religious  experience 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS  NATURE  91 

wants  God  and  the  mystic  claims  to  have  found  Him. 
The  mystic,  to  be  sure,  has  his  ascetic  practices  and  series 
of  meditations  and  trances  which  help  to  the  vision,  but 
his  guide  is  the  inner  light,  his  gospel  the  inner  hfe.  This 
mystic  way  of  life  is  twofold.  It  may  be  a  Via  Negativay 
as  it  was  for  Buddhism,  a  way  of  renunciation,  a  cutting  off 
of  interests  and  desires;  or  rather  (though  there  seems 
always  something  of  this  ascetic  element  to  be  found  in 
religious  mysticism),  it  may  be,  as  in  the  pagan  worship  of 
Dionysos,  and  in  much  Christian  mysticism,  a  joyful 
expansion,  a  rhythmic  exhilaration.  In  both  cases  it  is 
felt  as  self-abandonment,  a  self-surrender  to  a  higher  life. 

The  mystic  is  not  content  with  a  pragmatic  experience. 
The  problem  for  him  is  not  what  is  God  good  for  ^  but  to  see 
and  know  God,  as  the  ^'pure  in  heart  see  Him '' ;  this  is 
itself  blessedness.  '*  Get  close  to  yourself ;  then  you  will 
find  God,"  is  the  counsel  of  the  mystic.  The  method 
is  (1st)  the  elimination  of  all  external  conditions  and 
interests,  (2d)  concentration  on  the  inner  life,  or  the  idea 
of  God,  His  love  and  goodness,  (3d)  the  losing  of  self  in 
such  concentration,  —  for  the  soul  tends  to  lose  itself  in 
letting  go  all  external  things.  God's  grace  alone  works 
in  the  soul,  and  when  God  is  found  finite  personality  dis- 
appears; and  so  losing  itself  the  soul  says:  ''Let  there 
be  no  more  mine  and  thine."  This  is  insight,  at,tainment, 
the  highest  bliss. 

Mysticism  is  a  philosophical  system.     Tauler  says :  ^  — 

"^God  is  the  unity  in  which  all  miiltiplicity  is  transcended ;  in  Him 
are  gathered  up  both  becoming  and  being,  eternal  rest  and  eternal 
motion." 

But  mysticism  is  also  a  living  experience.  It  is  an  ex- 
perience, however,  which  the  mystic  cannot  communicate 
to  others.     Like  St.  Paul,  he  is  caught  up  into  Paradise, 

1  See  three  stages  of  the  mystic's  ascent  in  Tauler's  sermons,  quoted 
by  Inge,  ^'Christian  Mysticism,"  p.  186;  also  Buddhistic  series  of 
trances,  "Buddhism  in  Translation,"  Henry  Warren;  Ruyshroek's 
"Ladder  of  Love,"  seven  grades. 


92  THE  DRAMA  OF  THE   SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

and  hears  unspeakable  words  which  it  is  not  lawful  for  a 
man  to  utter.  Like  the  experience  on  the  lawn  at  mid- 
night in  Tennyson's  ^^In  Memoriam,"  he  knows  his  state 
is  changed,  but  the  experience  itself  is  inexpressible. 

"Ah  me !  but  oh  how  hard  to  frame, 
In  matter  moulded  forms  of  speech, 
Or  even  for  intellect  to  reach 
Through  memory  that  which  I  became." 

The  experience  is  unique,  an  affair  of  appreciation ;  every 
man  must  experience  it  for  himself.  The  mystic  can  only 
say,  ^^Come  and  see."  Come  and  drink  for  yourself  of 
the  Uving  water.  Find  for  yourseK  the  way  of  life.  Give 
up  all  for  the  pearl  of  great  price.  And  yet  the  mystic 
tries  by  various  formulae  and  by  the  language  of  the  sen- 
suous imagination  to  describe  this  experience. 

The  mystic  expresses  this  state  variously  as  ''Becoming 
one  with  God,"  as  ''bathed  in  love,"  a  state  "in  which 
the  creature  is  lost,  engulfed,"  as  Nirvana  or  "blissful 
nothingness,"  "cosmic  consciousness,"  "intellectual  en- 
lightenment," "illumination,"  "state  of  ecstasy,"  "trans- 
port like  an  immediate  perception,"  "highest  stage  of 
contemplation." 

"Still  desert  of  the  Godhead."  i 

"A  conversation  of  the  soul  with  God,  in  which  no  particular  thing 
is  asked  for,  an  aspiration  on  one  side  and  inspiration  on  the  other."  * 
A  "life  hid  in  Christ  with  God."  « 
"Knowledge  of  God's  wisdom  in  a  mystery."  ' 
"Visions  and  revelations  of  the  Lord."  ^ 
"Caught  up  into  Paradise,  and  heard  unspeakable  words."  ' 
"Vision  of  the  divine  essence." 
"The  vision  and  contemplation  of  the  truth."  * 
"Mihi  adhaerere  deo  bonum  est."  * 

"Vast  darkness  of  the  Godhead  into  which  the  soul  sinks."  * 
"The  Divine  Abyss,"  into  which  man  flings  himself.^ 

*  Eckhardt.  '  Francis  de  Sales. 

» St.  Paul.  4  St.  Augustine. 

•^  Ruysbroek.  « Tauler. 


THE  WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS  NATURE  93 

"The  immeasurable  sea  of  God's  infinite  goodness  into  which  the 
individual  sinks  and  there  rests  steadfast  and  immovable."  ^ 
"  Summa  merces  te  videre, 
Tibi  semper  inhaerere ; 
Tu  es  dulco  vitae  verse, 
Fons  f elicitatis  merae ; 
Fac  ut  tibi  placeam."  * 
"It  was  a  breaking  forth  of  the  sweetness  of  eternal  life,  felt  as 
present  in  the  stillness  of  contemplation."  * 

"When  we  rise  above  ourselves  and  in  our  ascent  to  God  are  made 
so  simple  that  the  love  which  embraces  us  is  occupied  only  with  itself, 
above  the  practice  of  all  the  virtues,  then  we  are  transformed  and 
die  in  God  to  ourselves  and  all  separate  individuality.  The  devout 
and  inward  spirits  are  by  grace  one  and  the  same  thing  with  God, 
because  the  same  essence  is  in  both."  * 

For  modern  illustrations :  — 

"Thou  comest  not,  thou  goest  not; 
Thou  wert  not,  will  not  be; 
Eternity  is  but  a  thought 
By  which  we  think  of  thee."  "^ 

"I  love  my  God,  but  with  no  love  of  mine, 
For  I  have  none  to  give ; 
I  love  thee,  Lord ;  but  all  the  love  is  thine, 
For  by  Thy  life  I  live. 
I  am  as  nothing  and  rejoice  to  be 
Emptied,  and  lost,  and  swallowed  up  in  Thee." 

"Thou,  Lord,  art  all  thy  children's  need. 
And  there  is  none  beside ; 
From  thee  the  streams  of  blessedness  proceed, 
In  thee  the  blest  abide ; 
Fountain  of  life,  and  all  abounding  grace. 
One  source,  one  centre,  and  one  dwelling-place."  • 

A  poet's  description  of  the  mystical  consciousness :  — 

"That  serene  and  blessed  mood 
In  which  the  affections  gently  lead  us  on. 
Until  the  breath  of  this  corporeal  frame. 
And  even  the  motion  of  our  human  blood 

1  Molinos.  2  Richard  Bolle  de  Hampde. 

3  Susa's  "Vision  of  Eternal  Wisdom."      <  Jluysbroek. 
^  Faber.  "  Mme.  Guyon. 


94  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Almost  suspended,  we  are  laid  asleep 
In  body,  and  become  a  living  soul.  • 
While  with  an  eye  made  quiet  by  the  power 
Of  Harmony,  and  the  deep  power  of  joy, 
We  see  into  the  life  of  things."  ^ 

"Thou  Life  within  my  life,  than  seK  more  near, 
Thou  veiled  Presence  infinitely  clear. 
From  all  illusive  shows  of  sense  I  flee. 
To  find  my  centre  and  my  rest  in  thee."  ^ 

But  by  these  descriptions  we  shall  agree  the  mystic 
hardly  defines  his  experience,  and  so  at  last  we  accept  his 

"Eye  hath  not  seen  nor  ear  heard,  neither  hath  it  entered  into  the 
heart  of  man  to  conceive  the  things  which  God  hath  prepared  for  those 
that  love  Him." 

or  again  in  the  lines  which  end  Goethe's  Faust :  — 

"Alles  Vergangliche 
1st  nur  ein  Gleichnisz, 
Das  Unzulangliche 
Hier  wird  Ereignisz 
Das  Unbeschreibliche 
Hier  ist  es  gethan." 

The  final  word  of  the  mystic  is,  '^  Farewell,  we  lose  our- 
selves in  light." 

The  Ethical  Religious  Consciousness.  —  But  now  let  us 
turn  to  the  other  side  of  the  opposition.  The  ethical- 
practical,  or  motor  type  of  religious  consciousness  appears 
as  the  exact  antithesis  of  the  mystical  consciousness. 
For  the  mystic  "the  way  of  fife"  is  the  yielding  of  himself 
to  the  will  of  God.  It  is  letting  God's  grace  work  in  and 
through  him  —  thus  he  finds  peace  and  reality.  Hence 
the  mystic  emphasizes  self-abandonment,  grace,  immedi- 
acy, the  actual  experience  of  the  attained  goal,  of  the  Real 
which  is  union  with  God.  But  for  our  present  type  of 
consciousness,  the  rehgious  ideal  is  a  goal  which  is  in- 
finitely removed.    It  is  the  object  of  an  endless  quest. 

*  Wordsworth. 

*  Newman,  "Dream  of  Gerontius." 


THE  WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   NATUEE 


95 


It  must  consequently  be  sought  by  means  of  a  temporal 
process,  yet  in  no  temporal  process  can  it  ever  be  attained. 

To  the  ethical,  religious  consciousness  the  ideal  shines 
like  some  star,  pure  and  serene,  on  a  far  horizon,  which 
ever  inspires,  beckons,  and  draws,  which  is  never  reached, 
yet  must  be  sought  with  steadfast  loyalty,  on  the  straight 
and  narrow  way  of  life. 

Or,  the  ethical  ideal  appears  as  the  voice  of  conscience 
and  duty ;  in  religious  language,  the  voice  of  God  in  the 
soul  of  man.  It  is  a  stern,  a  compelling  voice,  and  he  who 
hears  it  speak  must  needs  Usten  and  obey. 

"Though  love  refine  and  reason  chafe, 
There  came  a  voice  without  reply, 
'Tis  man's  perdition  to  be  safe 
When  for  the  truth  he  ought  to  die."  * 

Yet  to  those  who  hear  the  voice,  hearken  to  it  and  obey  it, 
it  comes  like  a  glad  trumpet  call  to  a  life  of  high  adventure, 
strenuous  living,  combat,  and  victory.  Hence  this  type 
of  consciousness  is  illustrated  by  the  rehgious  battle  hymns 
of  all  the  ages. 

See  the  song  of  Deborah,  Deut.  15,  for  a  primitive 
illustration.  In  mediaeval  and  modern  hymns,  many 
examples  may  be  found.     As  for  instance :  — 

"Onward,  Christian  Soldiers, 
Marching  as  to  war." 

"Fight  the  good  fight,  with  all  thy  might; 
Christ  is  thy  strength  and  Christ  thy  right. 
Lay  hold  on  life,  and  it  shall  be 
A  constant  joy  and  crown  to  thee." 

"God's  trumpet  wakes  the  slumbering  world; 
Now  each  man  to  his  post ! 
The  red-cross  banner  is  unfurled ; 
Who  joins  the  glorious  host? 

*  Compare  Wordsworth's  "Ode  to  Duty"  and 

"He  that  loveth  father  or  mother  more  than  me  is  not  worthy  of 
me.  .  .  .  And  he  that  doth  not  take  his  cross  and  follow  me  is  not 
worthy  of  me.  He  that  findeth  his  life,  shall  lose  it;  and  he  that 
loseth  his  life  for  my  sake,  shall  find  it." 


96  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

"He  who  in  fealty  to  the  Truth 
And  counting  all  the  cost, 
Doth  consecrate  his  generous  youth, 
He  joins  the  noble  host ! 

"He  who  with  calm,  undaunted  will, 
Ne'er  counts  the  battle  lost. 
But  though  defeated  battles  still, 
He  joins  the  faithful  host !  ^ 

"He  who  is  ready  for  the  cross. 
The  cause  despised  loves  most, 
And  shuns  not  pain  or  shame  or  loss, 
He  joins  the  glorious  host !  "  ^ 

Although  the  ethical  ideal  is  so  lofty  and  remote,  yet 
those  who  serve  it  must  have  their  feet  firmly  planted  on 
the  ground.  They  must,  i.e.,  seek  to  embody  it  in  their 
actual  everyday  life.  (Hence  the  Martha  illustration, 
p.  65.)  In  no  mystical,  subliminal  region  is  this  ideal  to  be 
found,  but  only  through  its  expression  in  the  commonplace 
life  of  every  man ;  for  this  way  of  life  is  the  active  way  of 
overcoming  and  doing;  and  since  the  goal  is  beyond  any 
present  attainment,  this  type  of  consciousness  is  always 
restless  and  unsatisfied;  for  every  level  of  spiritual  at- 
tainment is  but  a  stepping-stone  to  a  goal  which  seems  to 
recede  with  every  spiritual  advance.  This  is  what  we 
find  expressed  in  the  meditations  of  the  saints.  This 
form  of  religious  experience  is  described  in  motor  terms. 
Sometimes  it  is  a  warfare  or  pilgrimage  —  like  the  ex- 
perience of  Christian  on  the  journey  to  the  heavenly 
City,  the  way  is  beset  with  many  foes,  both  inner  and 
outer,  —  for  in  a  sense  this  experience  is  twofold.  The 
goal  may  be  personal  righteousness  of  fife,  the  attainment 
of  a  holy  will.  ''Be  ye,  therefore,  perfect  as  your  Father 
in  heaven  is  perfect."  (Matt.  6.)  Or,  since  this  ethical 
type  is  on  the  whole  social,  the  effort  for  personal  righteous- 
ness becomes  largely  identified  with  a  struggle  against  the 
evils  of  the  environment,  and  with  deeds  of  active  service 
^  Samuel  Longfellow. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   NATURE  97 

and  kindness  to  the  neighbor.  And,  as  the  goal  is  two- 
fold, so  also  in  correspondence,  is  the  way.  It  means, 
ultimately,  the  righteousness  of  the  individual  life  (a 
perfectly  holy  will  or  universalized  will),  and  righteous- 
ness (perfect  justice  and  law)  in  the  social  order. 

Sometimes  this  type  of  consciousness  is  described  by 
the  figure  of  a  race,  as  by  St.  Paul  in  the  Epistle  to  the 
PhiUppians.  ''One  thing  I  do,  forgetting  the  things  which 
are  behind,  and  stretching  forward  to  the  things  which 
are  before,  I  press  on  toward  the  goal,  unto  the  prize  of 
the  high  calling  of  God!"  ^  Or,  again,  in  the  familiar 
hymn  of  Philip  Doddridge :  — 

"Awake,  my  soul ;  stretch  every  nerve, 
And  press  with  vigor  on. 
A  heavenly  race  demands  thy  zeal, 
And  an  immortal  crown." 

Sometimes  as  a  wrestling  with  spiritual  foes,  as  in  the 
Epistle  to  the  Ephesians  — 

"Put  on  the  whole  armour  of  God,  that  ye  may  be  able  to  stand 
against  the  wiles  of  the  devil."  ^ 

"Christian,  dost  thou  see  them 
On  the  holy  ground  ? 
How  the  powers  of  darkness 
Rage  thy  steps  around  ? 
Christian,  up  and  smite  them, 
Counting  again  but  loss, 
In  the  strength  that  cometh 
By  the  holy  cross."  * 

Sometimes  as  a  life  of  adventure,  involving  much 
wandering,  as  in  Homer^s  Ulysses,  and  VirgiFs  iEneas. 

Sometimes  as  the  ascent  of  a  difficult  mountain,  as  in 
the  purgatorial  process  described  by  Dante  in  the  second 
part  of  the  "Divine  Comedy." 

1  Phil.  3: 13,  14. 

2  Ephesians  6 :  10-17. 

3  St.  Andrew  of  Crete,  d.  732,  tr.  by  J.  M.  Neale. 


98  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Sometimes,  directly,  as  the  object  of  an  endless  quest, 
as  in  the  poems  relating  to  the  search  for  the  Holy  Grail. ^ 

We  find  it  further  illustrated  in  all  those  hymns,  ancient 
and  modern,  which  express  a  '^ motor''  element.  Under 
all  the  forms  already  mentioned,  and  further  as  labor  in 
the  vineyard,  as  an  effort  to  realize  the  kingdom  of  God 
on  earth  through  missionary  effort,  and  by  deeds  of 
brotherly  love,  through  which  the  '^way  of  Hfe''  becomes 
the  way  of  the  cross,  the  way  of  vicarious  suffering  and 
self-sacrifice  and  atonement.  See,  for  illustration,  Hosea, 
Chapters  2,  3,  and  11,  where,  under  the  form  of  what  is 
supposed  to  be  his  own  personal  experience,  Hosea  de- 
scribes the  love  and  suffering  of  God  for  sinful  Israel. 

Or,  in  the  description  of  the  '* suffering  servant"  in 
Isaiah,  Chapter  53,  or 

"Greater  love  hath  no  man  than  this  that  a  man  lay  down  his  life 
for  his  friend."  "^ 

Again,  in  Greek  and  Latin  early  Christian  hymns  which 
emphasize  the  death  on  the  cross :  — 

"O  Lover  of  Mankind, 
To  Thee  all  glory  be, 
For  Thou  didst  give  not  death,  but  life 
When  hanging  on  the  tree."  ^ 

1  Compare  search  for  the  golden  fleece.  Also,  garden  of  the  Hes- 
perides,  and  lost  Atlantis ;  and  quests  in  fairy  tales  and  folklore,  and 
"Ulysses"  of  Tennyson  — 

**For  my  purpose  holds 
To  sail  beyond  the  sunset,  and  the  baths 
Of  all  the  western  stars,  until  I  die. 
It  may  be  that  the  gulf  wiU  wash  us  down ; 
It  may  be  we  shall  touch  the  Happy  Isles, 
And  see  the  great  Achilles,  whom  we  knew. 
Tho'  much  is  taken,  much  abides ;  and  tho' 
We  are  not  now  that  strength  which  in  old  days 
Moved  earth  and  heaven ;  that  which  we  are,  we  are ; 
One  equal  temper  of  heroic  hearts. 
Made  weak  by  time  and  fate,  but  strong  in  will 
To  strive,  to  seek,  to  find,  and  not  to  yield." 
« St.  John,  15 :  13. 

'  Hymn  of  the  Greek  Church.  Latin  Hymns,  and  other  illustrations 
in  hymns  of  aU  ages :  — 


THE   WAY  OF   LIFE  —  ITS   NATURE  99 

and  also  in  all  collections  of  Evangelical  sects.^    Even 
from  the  fourteenth  century  mystics  we  get 

"Works  of  love  are  more  acceptable  to  God  than  lofty  contempla- 
tion." 2 

We  find  as  we  should  expect  to  do,  this  ethical,  active 

type  of  religious  consciousness  frequently  illustrated  in 

our  modern  poetry  which  is  not  religious  in  the  technical 

sense.     For  example,  in  Tennyson's  ^' Wages,"  and  "Last 

Lines." 

WAGES 

"Glory  of  warrior,  glory  of  orator,  glory  of  song, 
Paid  with  a  voice  flying  to  be  lost  on  an  endless  sea  — 
Glory  of  Virtue,  to  fight,  to  struggle,  to  right  the  wrong  — 
Nay,  but  she  aim'd  not  at  glory,  no  lover  of  glory  she : 
Give  her  the  glory  of  going  on,  and  still  to  be. 

"  The  wages  of  sin  is  death :  if  the  wages  of  Virtue  be  dust, 
Would  she  have  heart  to  endure  for  the  life  of  the  worm  and  the  fly? 
She  desires  no  isles  of  the  blest,  no  quiet  seats  of  the  just, 
To  rest  in  a  golden  grove,  or  to  bask  in  a  summer  sky : 
Give  her  the  wages  of  going  on,  and  not  to  die." 

Browning,  is,  of  course,  preeminently  the  poet  who  sings 
"the  glory  of  the  imperfect."  Paracelsus  illustrates  it 
amongst  the  longer  poems,  "Rabbi  Ben  Ezra,"  "Pros- 
pice"  and  "Epilogue"  and  many  another  amongst  the 
shorter  ones. 

"One  who  never  turned  his  back  but  marched  heart  forward, 
Never  doubted  clouds  would  break, 

Never  dreamed  though  right  were  worsted,  wrong  would  triimiph, 
Held  we  fall  to  rise,  are  baffled  to  fight  better. 
Sleep  to  wake. 

**  Vexilla  regis 

Stabat  Mater.*' 
^*Ah,  wounded  Head!" 

—  Gerhardt. 

^*0  love  divine,  that  stooped  to  share." 

—  O.  W.  Holmes. 
^  Montgomery's  Hymn,  *<* A  poor  wa5^aring  man  of  grief.*' 
John  Tyler's  "Lord,  what  offering  shall  we  bring 
At  thine  altars  when  we  bow? " 
«  Tauler. 


100  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

**  No,  at  noonday  in  the  bustle  of  man's  work-time 
Greet  the  miseen  with  a  cheer ! 
Bid  him  forward,  heart  and  back  as  either  should  be ; 
'Strive  and  thrive ! '  cry  'Speed,'  —  fight  on,  forever. 
There  as  here!'" 

We  meet  it  also  in  Stevenson's  "If  This  Were  Faith"  :  — 

"To  thrill  with  the  joy  of  girded  men, 
To  go  on  forever  and  fail,  and  go  on  again, 
And  be  mauled  to  the  earth  and  arise. 

And  contend  for  the  shade  of  a  word  and  a  thing  not  seen  with  the 
eyes." 

In  Goethe's  ''  Faust '' :  — 

"Whoever  strives  unweariedly 
Is  not  beyond  redeeming." 

that  is,  so  long  as  the  ideal  is  consciously  pursued,  man  is 
on  the  way  to  salvation. 

In  reUgions  other  than  the  Hebrew  and  Christian,  this 
type  of  religious  experience  is  found.  As  we  should  natu- 
rally expect,  in  Zoroastrianism,  whose  fundamental  con- 
ception is  that  of  warfare  between  the  principles  of  light 
and  darkness,  of  good  and  evil,  —  a  warfare  in  which  man 
must  actively  struggle  without  rest  in  order  to  overcome 
evil  and  bring  in  the  good. 

"  The  will  of  the  Lord  is  the  law  of  righteousness,  the  reward  of 
heaven  is  to  be  hoped  for  for  those  works,  performed  in  the  world  of 
Mazda ;  Ahura  holds  him  right  who  supports  the  poor.  Righteous- 
ness is  the  best  possession;  blessed  is  the  man  whose  righteousness 
is  perfect."  ^ 

But  we  find  this  consciousness  also  in  Buddhism  and 
Stoicism.  Even  though  these,  forms  of  religion  lay  stress 
on  renunciation  and  the  acceptance  of  fate  and  on  negative 
moral  principles,  we  feel  them  to  be  ultimately  ethical  — 
dramas  of  the  inner  life  —  which  emphasize  an  attitude 
dependent  at  last  on  the  will  of  man.  And  further,  the 
ideal  in  both  is  one  which  is  never  attained  in  time.  For 
where,  as  Plutarch  said,  is  to  be  found  the  completely 

^  Formula  of  confession  of  Zoroastrianism. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITB .  NAT^UI^^  "  {}://^lQi'' 

wise  man  of  the  Stoics  ?  And  as  for  Nirvana, — the  heaven 
of  Buddhism,  —  it  is  the  hmit  to  the  series  of  trances,  but 
ever  the  term  beyond  the  actual  series.  Buddhism  is  a 
rehgion  of  universal  compassion  and  brotherly  love,  and 
even  though  this  ethical  attitude  is,  in  Buddhism,  rather 
negative  than  affirmative,  yet  in  its  ^^  discipline  of  ele- 
vated conduct"  ;  in  the  command  to  ''win  merit '^  through 
the  practice  of  good  deeds ;  in  the  attitude  of  renunciation 
of  the  world  through  the  overcoming  of  ignorance  and 
(in  consequence)  of  desire ;  in  the  duty  which  the  Buddha 
enjoined  upon  his  disciples  both  by  precept  and  example 
to  spread  insight,  to  preach  the  doctrine ;  and  in  the  doc- 
trine of ''  Karma, '^  which  teaches  that  future  happiness  and 
misery  (re-birth)  depend  on  the  nature  of  the  deeds  done, 
—  in  all  this  we  have  surely  an  active  religious  principle 
and  experience. 

As  for  the  Stoic,  he  makes,  once  for  all,  like  the  Buddhist, 
''the  great  renunciation"  ;  that  is,  he  accepts  the  decrees 
of  the  imiverse,  the  brevity  of  mortal  existence  and  the 
chances  of  fortune.  Then,  for  the  rest,  the  ordering  of 
his  life  is  in  his  own  hands  and  he  seeks  to  control  it  ac- 
cording to  the  dictates  of  the  higher  nature  and  of  uni- 
versal reason. 

"Live  with  the  gods.  And  he  does  live  with  the  gods  who  con- 
stantly shows  to  them  that  his  soul  is  satisfied  with  that  which  is 
assigned  to  him,  and  that  it  does  all  that  the  daemon  wishes,  which 
Zeus  hath  given  to  every  man  for  his  guardian  and  guide,  a  portion  of 
himself.    And  this  is  every  man's  understanding  and  reason."  ^ 


But  the  perfect  "golden  mean"  or  the  life  completely 
in  accord  with  universal  reason,  is  an  unattainable  goal. 

This  motor  type,  again,  is  very  prominent,  of  course, 
in  the  proselitizing  activity  of  Mohammedanism,  though 
combined  here  also  with  a  fatalistic  attitude. 

In  order  to  bring  out  more  clearly  the  contrast  be- 
tween the  two  types  of  religious  experience  which  we 

^  "Meditations,"  Marcus  Aurelius. 


102  THE   IPRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

have  been  considering,  I  give  herewith  the  two  following 
poems :  — 

"O  world  invisible,  we  view  thee, 
O  world  intangible,  we  touch  thee, 
O  world  unknownable,  we  know  thee, 
Inapprehensible,  we  clutch  thee ! 

"  Does  the  fish  soar  to  find  the  ocean. 
The  eagle  plunge  to  find  the  air, 
That  we  ask  of  the  stars  in  motion 
If  they  have  rumor  of  thee  there? 

"  Not  where  the  wheeling  systems  darken, 
And  our  benumbed  conceiving  soars ; 
The  drift  of  pinions,  would  we  hearken, 
Beats  at  our  own  clay-shuttered  doors. 

"  The  angels  keep  their  ancient  places ; 
Turn  but  a  stone,  and  start  a  wing ! 
'Tis  ye,  His  your  estranged  faces. 
That  miss  the  many-splendored  thing. 

"But  (when  so  sad  thou  can'st  not  sadder). 
Cry :  and  upon  thy  so  sore  loss 
Shall  shine  the  traffic  of  Jacob's  ladder. 
Pitched  between  heaven  and  Charing  Cross. 

"  Yea,  in  the  night,  my  soul,  my  daughter. 
Cry,  clinging  heaven  by  the  hems ; 
And  lo !  Christ  walketh  on  the  water. 
Not  of  Genesareth  but  Thames."  ^ 


"A  man  said  unto  his  Angel : 
*  My  spirits  are  fallen  low. 
And  I  cannot  carry  this  battle  ; 
O,  brother,  where  might  I  go? 

"  *  The  terrible  kings  are  on  me 

With  spears  that  are  deadly  bright ; 
Against  me  so  from  the  cradle 
Do  fate  and  my  fathers  fight.' 

"  Then  said  to  the  man  his  Angel : 
'Thou  wavering,  witless  soul. 
Back  to  the  ranks !    What  matter 
To  win  or  to  lose  the  whole, 

*  Francis  Thompson. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   NATURE 

"  *  As  judged  by  the  little  judges 
Who  hearken  not  well  nor  see? 
Not  thus,  by  the  outer  issue, 
The  Wise  shall  interpret  thee. 

"  *  Thy  will  is  the  sovereign  measure 
And  only  event  of  things ; 
The  puniest  heart,  defying, 

Were  stronger  than  all  these  kings. 

"  *  Though  out  of  the  past  they  gather 
Mind's  Doubt  and  Bodily  Pain 
And  pallid  Thirst  of  the  Spirit 
That  is  kin  to  the  other  twain, 

"  *  And  Grief,  in  a  cloud  of  banners. 
And  ringleted  Vain  Desires, 
And  Vice,  with  the  spoils  upon  him 
Of  thee,  and  thy  beaten  sires, 

" '  While  Kings  of  eternal  evil 
Yet  darken  the  hills  about, 
Thy  part  is  with  broken  sabre 
To  rise  on  the  last  redoubt ; 

"  *  To  fear  not  sensible  failure, 
Nor  covet  the  game  at  all, 
But  fighting,  fighting,  fighting, 
Die,  driven  against  the  wall ! '  "  * 


103 


Another  form  of  opposition  which  reUgious  experience, 
in  its  essence,  takes,  is  the  opposition  between  the  indi- 
vidual and  the  social  experience.  In  describing  the  mystic 
experience,  we  have  in  a  measure  already  described  that 
type  of  religious  experience  which  is  most  isolated  and 
individual.  The  mystic  is  the  ^'God-intoxicated  man." 
He  finds  God  in  the  depths  of  his  own  inmost  conscious- 
ness. It  is  here  that  the  directing  voice  speaks  to  him,  the 
inner  light  shines  to  guide  him. 

Here  are  two  illustrations  of  the  mystic-individuahstic 
consciousness :  — 

1  Louise  Imogen  Guiney. 


104  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

"  In  the  orison  of  union  the  soul  is  fully  awake  as  regards  God,  but 
wholly  asleep  as  regards  things  of  this  world,  and  in  respect  to  herself. 
God  establishes  himself  in  the  interior  of  the  soul  in  such  a  way,  that 
when  she  returns  to  herself  it  is  wholly  impossible  for  her  to  doubt 
that  she  has  been  in  God  and  God  in  her.  If  you  ask  how  it  is  possi- 
ble that  the  soul  can  see  and  understand  that  she  has  been  in  God, 
since  during  the  union  she  has  neither  sight  nor  understanding,  I  reply 
that  she  does  not  see  it  then  but  that  she  sees  it  clearly  later,  after 
she  has  returned  to  herself,  not  by  any  vision,  but  by  a  certitude 
which  abides  with  her  and  which  God  alone  gives  her."  * 

Ruysbroek  writes :  "All  men  who  are  exalted  above  their  creature- 
liness  into  a  contemplative  life  are  one  with  the  Divine  Glory,  yea  are 
the  glory.  Wherefore  contemplative  men  should  rise  above  reason  and 
distraction,  and  gaze  perpetually  by  the  aid  of  their  inborn  light,  and 
so  they  become  transformed,  and  one  with  the  same  light,  by  means 
of  which  they  see,  and  which  they  see." 

Again  and  again  in  the  '^Book  of  Acts"  and  in  PauFs 
letters,  we  read  that  Paul  was  directed  by  God  in  a  dream 
or  vision,  that  is,  in  inner  experience,  to  undertake  a 
certain  task  or  go  on  a  certain  journey. 

1.  As  we  study  the  experience  of  Buddhist  and  Chris- 
tian mystics,  we  note  that  this  inner  experience  appears  to 
be  one  of  intense  concentration  of  attention  with  accom- 
panying intensity  of  emotion,  of  '4neff ability,"  as  the 
mystic  calls  it,  and  a  consequent  sense  of  illumination. 
Now  for  the  average  consciousness  to  attain  such  a  state 
of  rapt  attention  and  abstraction,  stillness  and  soUtude 
are  requisite.  Hence  we  find  the  mystic  consciousness 
haunting  the  sohtary  mountain  top,  the  desert,  or  the 
monk^s  cell. 

"  God,  who  gave  to  him  the  lyre, 
Of  all  mortals  the  desire, 
For  all  breathing  men's  behoof, 
Straightly  charged  him,  *  Sit  aloof ' ; 
Annexed  a  warning,  poets  say, 

To  the  bright  premium  — 
Ever  when  twain  together  play, 

Shall  the  harp  be  dumb. 

*  Autobiography  of  St.  Theresa,  quoted  by  Professor  James. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   NATURE  105 

"  Many  may  come, 
But  one  shall  sing  ; 
Two  touch  the  string, 
The  harp  is  dumb, 
Though  there  come  a  million. 
Wise  Saadi  dwells  alone."  ^ 

An  example  from  Buddhistic  experience :  — 

"If  before  me,  if  behind  me,  my  eye  sees  no  other,  it  is  truly  pleas- 
ant to  dwell  alone  in  the  forest.  Come,  then,  into  the  forest,  which 
Buddha  praises;  therein  it  is  good  for  the  soUtary  monk  to  dwell 
who  seeks  perfection.  Alone,  without  comrades,  in  the  lovely  forest, 
when  shall  I  have  gained  the  goal?  When  shall  I  be  free  from  sin? 
When  the  monk  in  a  mountain  cave  surrenders  himself  to  abstractions, 
he  can  have  no  greater  joy." 

Let  us  compare  with  this  the  experience  of  Mohammed. 
Before  his  assumption  of  the  prophetical  office,  Mo- 
hammed retired  from  his  people  and  hved  sohtary  on 
Mount  Hura,  in  the  practice  of  devotion  to  God.  There 
the  Most  High  imparted  to  him  religious  guidance,  by  the 
aid  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  with  true  dreams,  the  voices  of 
angels,  and  just  meditations.  Meanwhile,  he  advanced 
in  the  degrees  of  divine  love  and  knowledge,  and  was 
adorned  with  all  that  is  praiseworthy  and  excellent.^ 

The  epitome  of  the  life  of  the  cloister  whose  song  is 

"O  sola  beatitudo, 
0  beata  solitudo." 

is  found  in  the  ''Imitation'^  of  Thomas  h  Kempis.  In 
self-denial  and  purity,  in  renunciation  of  the  world  and  in 
avoidance  of  society  and  conversation,  true  peace  is  to  be 
found. 

2.  Another  form  of  this  type  of  individual  religious 
consciousness  is  the  proud  self-dependence  of  the  Stoic 
consciousness.     Thus  Seneca  says :  — 

"Whenever  I  have  gone  among  men,  I  have  returned  home  less  than 
a  man." 

1  See  Emerson's  "Saadi." 

2  "Life  and  Religion  of  Mohammed,"  from  the  "Sheeah  Traditions 
of  the  Hyat-ul  Kuloob,"  tr.  by  Rev.  J.  L.  Merrick. 


106  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

The  Quakers,  with  their  gospel  of  the  ^4nner  light '^  and 
divine  '^openings/'  as  a  direct  response  from  God,  are 
another  instance.  These  are  a  variation  of  the  mystic 
type,  although  we  must,  to  be  sure,  remember  the  social 
nature  of  ^Hhe  meeting"  ;  and  still  other  illustrations  are 
the  Wesleyans  with  their  emphasis  on  individual  experi- 
ence as  the  final  test  of  truth.  Thus  I  read  in  a  recent 
doctor's  thesis:  '^for  the  individual  the  only  possible 
standard  of  evaluation  is  the  personal  experience.  Other 
standards  do  not  exist  for  him."  '*  Personal  reUgious 
experience  is  the  fundamental  fact." 

For  a  philosophic  expression  of  this  type  of  conscious- 
ness see  ^'On  The  Inward  Ruler"  (from  the  Brihadaran- 
yaka-Upanishad,  III.  V.  2). 

"He  who,  dwelling  in  the  understanding  (etc.)  is  other  than  the 
understanding,  whom  the  understanding  knows  not,  whose  body  the 
understanding  is,  who  inwardly  rules  the  understanding,  is  thy  Self, 
the  Inward  Ruler,  the  deathless.  He  unseen  sees,  unheard  hears, 
unthought  thinks,  uncomprehended  comprehends.  There  is  no  other 
than  he  who  sees,  no  other  who  hears,  no  other  who  thinks,  no  other 
who  comprehends.  He  is  thy  Self,  the  Inward  Ruler,  the  deathless. 
All  else  is  fraught  with  sorrow." 

3.  Still  another  illustration  of  the  individual,  religious 
experience  is  that  in  which  the  relation  is  dual,  ix.  it  con- 
sists of  an  intimate  sense  of  God's  unseen  presence  and 
of  communion  with  Him  as  with  a  person,  as  companion, 
father,  guide,  protector,  etc. 

The  prophets  of  Israel,  one  and  all,  have  a  social  pro- 
gramme, and  yet  the  way  in  which  the  divine  message 
comes  to  them,  the  'Hhus  saith  the  Lord,"  appears  to  be 
very  much  of  this  individual  and  inward  type  of  experi- 
ence. Note  especially  the  prophet  Jeremiah,  the  founder 
of  individual  religious  experience  and  the  father  of  prayer, 
as  he  has  been  called.  Jeremiah  talks  with  God.  We 
find  the  same  thing  illustrated  in  the  ''Confessions  of  St. 
Augustine."  Augustine's  theory  and  doctrine,  although 
influenced  by  the  thought  of  the  day  as  to  form,  was  de- 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   NATURE  107 

rived  largely  from  reflections  on  his  own  personal  ex- 
perience. 

"Roam  not  away  beyond  thyself;  in  the  inner  man  dwells  the 
truth ;  seek  it  in  the  stillness  and  leisure  of  thy  spirit.  To  love  God 
is  to  know  God,  the  purer  the  heart  from  all  defilement,  so  much  the 
more  is  it  capable  of  beholding  the  truth."  * 

George  Herbert's  poems  are  another  instance  of  the  dual 
rehgious  consciousness.  In  Professor  George  H.  Palmer's 
interesting  sketch  of  Herbert's  hfe,  he  tells  us  how  the 
England  of  Herbert's  day  was  everywhere  awakening  to 
the  spirit  of  the  Renaissance,  —  to  individuahsm  in 
poUtics,  art,  science,  and  rehgion.  In  religion  Puritanism 
was  an  expression  of  it.  The  watchword  was  the  in- 
dividual's responsibihty  to  God.  It  is  variously  em- 
bodied in  the  great  leaders,  Thomas  Hume,  George  Fox, 
and  John  Bunyan. 

'^Herbert,"  says  Professor  Palmer,  "is  the  child  of  this 
age  of  awakening  individuahsm.  He  declares  his  resolu- 
tion to  be  "that  my  poor  abilities  in  poetry  shall  be  all 
and  ever  consecrated  to  God's  glory."  To  him  God  also 
is  an  individual.  The  language  which  some  of  the  mystics 
use,  perhaps  unconsciously,  is  consciously  employed  by 
Herbert  to  set  forth  his  relations  to  Christ,  i.e.  he  takes 
the  language  of  the  love  lyrics  of  his  day  and  devotes  it 
to  the  description  of  heavenly  love.  He  loves  to  analyze 
and  play  with  the  varieties  of  his  emotional  experience. 
Here  we  have  not  the  lonely  mystic  consciousness,  nor  yet 
the  motor  consciousness  which  tends  to  include  other  men 
in  its  experience.  It  is  a  dual  relationship,  a  communion 
of  two  individuals,  God  and  man.  The  finite  individual 
is  not  in  the  least  lost,  for  by  contrasting  situations  of 
question  and  reply,  appeal  and  rejection  or  acceptance,  of 
seeking  and  finding,  hiding  and  discovering,  etc.,  the 
separation  and  yet  relation  of  one  individual  to  another  is 
constantly  emphasized.     In  the  poems  we  find  expressed 

1 "  St.  Augustine's  Confessions." 


108  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

on  the  one  hand,  God^s  attitude  to  man.  God  is  the  lover 
of  man  who  seeks  to  win  him  from  his  wanderings  to  him- 
self. In  others,  man's  side  is  given,  his  hesitations, 
waverings,  withdrawals,  sense  of  sin  and  remorse;  his 
loneliness,  aspirations,  longing  and  love  of  God.^ 
Here  are  two  examples  from  Herbert's  poems :  — 

BITTER-SWEET 

"Ah  by  deare  angrie  Lord, 

Since  thou  dost  love,  yet  strike, 
Cast  down,  yet  help  afford, 
Sure  I  will  do  the  like. 

"  I  will  complain,  yet  praise ; 
I  will  bewail,  approve  ; 
And  all  my  soure-sweet  dayes 
I  will  lament  and  love." 

A  PARODIE 

"Soul's  joy,  when  thou  art  gone, 
And  I  alone 
Which  cannot  be, 
Because  thou  dost  abide  with  me 
And  I  depend  on  thee, 

"  Yet  when  thou  dost  suppresse 
The  cheerfulnesse 
Of  thy  abode. 
And  in  my  powers  not  stirre  abroad, 
But  leave  me  to  my  load ; 

"  O  what  a  damp  and  shade 
Doth  me  invade ! 
No  storme  night 
Can  so  afflict  or  so  affright 
As  thy  echpsed  light." 

4.  Then  there  is  that  type  of  rehgious  experience,  the 
experience  of  the  leaders,  heroes,  saviours,  reformers, 
martyrs  of  the  race,  which  being  more  unique  and  original 
and  of  deeper  insight  than  that  of  the  social  group  to  which 

1  See  "Life  of  George  Herbert,"  in  the  edition  of  Herbert's  poems 
by  George  Herbert  Palmer. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   NATURE  109 

it  belongs,  must  to  some  extent  be  a  solitary,  an  individual, 
experience.  If  the  master  of  religious  ceremonies,  the 
priest  who  leads  the  litany,^  the  dreamer  or  interpreter  of 
an  exceptional  dream,  even  the  leader  of  a  savage  dance 
or  chorus,  must  have  a  consciousness  slightly  differen- 
tiated from  the  social  consciousness  of  the  throng,  how 
much  more  must  this  be  true  of  those  great  personalities, 
the  founders  of  new  religious  thought,  the  bringers  of  a 
new  religious  life  and  gospel ! 

How  lonely  must  have  been  the  consciousness,  for  in- 
stance, of  that  great  Hebrew  prophet  who  was  forced  by 
the  inevitable  voice  of  God  to  be  the  messenger  to  his 
beloved  people  of  coming  doom !  We  get  some  notion  of 
it  in  Jeremiah  20 :  7-9. 

"0  Lord,  thou  hast  deceived  me  and  I  was  deceived:  thou  art 
stronger  than  I,  and  hast  prevailed:  I  am  become  a  laughmgstock 
all  the  day,  everyone  mocketh  me.  For  as  often  as  I  speak  I  cry  out ; 
I  cry  violence  and  spoil  because  the  word  of  the  Lord  is  made  a  re- 
proach unto  me,  and  a  derision  all  the  day.  And  if  I  say  I  will  not 
make  mention  of  him,  nor  speak  any  more  in  his  name,  then  there  is 
in  mine  heart,  as  it  were,  a  burning  fire  shut  up  in  my  bones,  and  I 
am  weary  with  forbearing,  and  I  cannot  contain." 

The  lonely  consciousness  appears  again  in  the  descrip- 
tion of  'Hhe  suffering  servant"  in  Isaiah  53. 

5.  Finally,  we  have  another  variation  of  the  individual 
religious  experience  in  that  type  of  ethical  religious  con- 
sciousness which  holds  itself  directly  accountable  to  God 
for  its  deeds,  which  knows  no  mediator  between  God  and 
the  soul.  To  such  an  one  life  as  a  whole  is  dramatic, 
and  the  individuaFs  own  place  in  it  unique,  his  attitude 

1  As  an  illustration,  see  description  of  the  Christian  religious  service 
in  Pater's  "Marius,  the  Epicurean"  :  "The  mystery,  if  such  in  fact  it 
was,  centred,  indeed,  in  the  actions  of  one  visible  person  (the  bishop) 
distinguished  among  the  assistants.  The  solemn  character  of  the 
singing  was  at  its  height  when  he  opened  his  lips.  Like  some  new 
sort  of  rhapsodos,  it  was  for  the  moment  as  if  he  alone  possessed  the 
words  of  the  office,  and  they  flowed  anew  from  some  permanent  source 
of  inspiration  within  him." 


110  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

momentous,  his  experience  irreducible  and  incommuni- 
cable; it  is  'Hhe  unclassified  residuiun"  of  James, 
the  indefinable  uniqueness  in  the  writings  of  Emerson 
and  of  Stevenson. 

"It  (the  new  church)  shall  send  man  home  to  his  central  solitude. 
He  shall  expect  no  cooperation,  he  shall  walk  with  no  companion. 
The  nameless  Thought,  the  nameless  Power,  the  superpersonal  Heart, 
he  shall  repose  alone  on  that."  ^ 

"Ask  no  man's  counsel  but  thine  own  only  and  God's.  Brother, 
thou  hast  possibility  in  thee  for  much,  the  possibility  of  writing  on 
the  eternal  skies  the  record  of  an  heroic  life."  ^ 

"Out  of  the  heart  are  the  issues  of  life."  ^ 

"I  will  put  my  law  in  their  inward  parts,  and  in  their  heart  I  will 
write  it."  * 

But  now,  having  seen  in  our  illustrations  the  prominence 
of  individual  experience  in  reUgion,  let  us  turn  to  the  other 
side  of  the  opposition,  for  certainly  rehgious  experience  is 
also  social. 

If  we  may  judge  from  such  external  religious  phenomena 
as  ancient  customs  and  ceremonials,  the  reports  of  which 
have  come  down  to  us,  and  from  the  religious  practices 
of  savages  at  the  present  day,  primitive  religion  must 
have  been  entirely  a  social  affair ;  and  in  fact  when  all  life 
practically  was  group-life,  religion  was,  inevitably,  social. 
There  was  no  individual  consciousness  in  our  sense  of  the 
word.  The  life  of  the  individual  was  wrapped  up  in  the 
life  of  the  group ;  the  protection,  preservation,  and  pro- 
motion of  social  solidarity  was  the  primary  concern,  and 
for  this  the  religious  ceremonies  and  religious  taboos  ex- 
isted.^ Hence  in  savage  life  special  emphasis  was  laid 
on  all  those  crises  in  human  life  which  involve  strain  and 

1  R.  W.  Emerson,  ^'Worship." 

2  T.  Carlyle. 

»  Proverbs  4  :  23. 
*  Jeremiah,  31 :  33. 

•^See  "Psychology  of  Religious  Experience,"  Part  II,  by  Charles 
Scribner  Ames. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE 


ITS  NATURE 


111 


danger  to  the  welfare  of  the  tribe,  —  such  crises  as  birth, 
death,  marriage,  war,  youth,  sickness.  These,  and  the 
transformations  in  nature  cycles,  such  as  the  change  of 
the  seasons,  which  are  especially  bound  up  with  primitive 
human  interests,  are  the  occasions  for  ceremonies  and 
magic  rites,  ''rites  de  passage,"  as  they  have  been  called. 
These  religious  group-actions  have  usually  a  strong  emo- 
tional accompaniment.  From  the  genetic  point  of  view 
action  is  primary,  and  religious  acts  appear  to  be  those 
acts  of  a  social  nature  with  intense  emotional  accompani- 
ment which  relate  to  the  common  or  tribal  good.  These 
group  activities  are  often  of  the  type  of  sympathetic  or 
imitative  magic,  but  sometimes  the  magic  seems  to  con- 
sist in  the  emotional  frenzy  itself,  of  the  dancing,  march- 
ing, singing  throng ;  and  those  individuals  in  whom  it  is 
most  extreme,  who  lose  themselves  in  trance  and  ecstasy 
become  the  totem  or  the  god.  They  utter  oracles,  heal 
disease,  acquire  supernatural  power  and  magic  efficacy, 
etc.,  but  these  powers  must  be  used  for  the  good  of  the 
group  as  a  whole.  ''Religion  in  primitive  society,"  says 
Professor  Ames,  "may  be  regarded  as  primarily  a  system 
for  the  controlling  of  the  group  with  reference  to  the 
ends  which  are  felt  most  acutely  by  the  group  as  a 
group." 

Robertson  Smith,  in  his  "Religion  of  the  Semites," 
shows  that  the  religion  of  the  IsraeUtes,  as  well  as  of  other 
Semitic  peoples,  was  at  first  a  tribal  affair,  its  essence  the 
sohdarity  of  the  gods  and  their  worshippers,  based  on  the 
physical  principle  of  kinship.  Jahwe  was  the  god  of  the 
tribe,  perhaps  at  first  a  totem,  and  Israel  his  peculiar 
people.  The  individual  was  born  into  this  religion  and 
accepted  it  as  he  did  the  political,  social  environment; 
and  he  performed  its  obligations  as  he  did  the  rest  of  his 
social  duties.  The  religious  powers  were  held  to  be  on  the 
side  of  tribal,  social  order  and  whatever  of  moral  there 
was  was  boimd  up  with  the  preservation  and  welfare  of 
the  tribal  group, — ^^the  social  whole.     "A  man,"  says 


112  THE    DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Robertson  Smith,  '^had  no  right  to  enter  into  private 
relations  with  supernatural  powers  that  might  help  him 
at  the  expense  of  the  community  to  which  he  belonged. 
In  his  relations  to  the  unseen  he  was  bound  always  to  think 
and  act  with  and  for  the  community  and  not  for  himself 
alone. '^ 

Since  the  ceremonials  required  magic  practices,  Ames 
makes  the  distinction  between  ^'collective  magic''  and 
'^  individual  magic."  An  individual  who  practised  magic 
on  his  own  account  would  probably  have  been  considered 
a  malefactor,  or  one  to  be  expelled  from  the  tribal 
group. 

Even  prayer,  that  most  intimate  and  personal  form  of 
religious  experience,  —  as  it  appeared  in  our  considera- 
tion of  individual  experience,  —  seems  originally,  in  primi- 
tive society,  to  have  had  rather  a  social  than  an  individual 
bearing. 

Prayer  began  as  a  magic  formula  or  incantation,  and  was 
simply  a  verbal  accompaniment  to  the  social  rites  and 
ceremonial  activities.  No  god  was  directly  invoked,  but 
the  prayer  formula  itself  was  a  kind  of  "spell"  which  had 
magic  efficacy.^ 

In  the  collection  of  the  Artharva  Veda,  the  incanta- 
tions or  prayers  accompany  some  rite,  as  the  laying  on 
of  an  amulet,  an  ointment,  etc. ;  i.e.  prayer  was  inciden- 
tal to  the  active  rite  and  this,  if  a  religious  rite,  was 
social. 

But  leaving  primitive  man,  we  find  that  social  religious 
experience  exists  to-day.  We  may  classify  this  experi- 
ence according  to  that  psychic  character  which  is  most 
prominent  in  each  of  the  different  forms  in  which  the 
experience  manifests  itself,  but  this  can  be  but  a  rough 
sort  of  classification,  since  there  are  so  many  border- 
line cases. 

(1)  The  motor  experience  of  the  Active  Type.  Doing  things  to- 
gether.    Stress  on  together. 

1  See  Ames,  "Psychology  of  Religious  Experience." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   NATURE 


113 


(2)  Feeling  together,  sense  of  presence  of  others  in  oneness  of 
feeling. 

(3)  Religious  experience  as  thought  which  has  become  public, 
collective,  expressed  in  the  institutions  and  organizations  of  society. 

(4)  Religious  experience  as  universalization  or  socialization  of  the 
will.     Categorical  imperative.     Golden  rule. 

(5)  Thought,  feeling,  and  will  of  all  united  in  a  mystical  experience. 
Vine  and  branches.     Love  of  God  and  man.     Christian  church. 

Class  I.  —  (1)  Under  Class  I  we  may  group  all  those 
religious  ceremonies  and  acts  of  worship  found  in  all  his- 
torical religions,  from  the  experience  of  primitive  man  to 
the  present  day,  which  are  motor  and  emphasize  doing 
things  together,  frequently  with  strong  rhythmic  action, 
the  "togetherness"  being  essential  to  the  activity  as  a 
whole.  As  for  instance  in  the  sacred  dance,  sacred  march, 
and  sacred  chorus;  the  singing  of  hymns  together,  the 
antistrophic  movement  of  litanies. 

"Sursum  corda! 
Habemus  ad  dominimi 
Gratias  argemus  Domino  Deo  nostro ! " 

In  this  class  belong  also  those  social  acts  such  as  taking 
part  in  sacred  rites,  as  in  sacrifices,  lustrations,  initiations, 
etc. 

The  hymns  which  express  a  motor  element  have  usu- 
ally this  social  character  as  well,  e.g,  of  fighting  or  march- 
ing together  as  an  army,  a  band  of  pilgrims,  or  fellow 

laborers. 

"Come,  brothers,  let  us  go. 
We  travel  hand  in  hand, 
Each  in  his  brother  finds  his  joy, 
In  this  wild  stranger  land." 

In  fact,  hymns  used  for  public  worship  are  supposed, 
for  the  most  part,  to  express  the  collective  consciousness, 
a  consciousness  which  the  social  activity  involved  tends  to 
emphasize  and  augment. 

"0  come,  let  us  sing  unto  the  Lord." 
"All  ye  works  of  the  Lord,  bless  ye  the  Lord." 

I 


114  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 


ADESTE  FIDELES 

"Adeste  fideles, 
Lasti  triumphantes 
Venite,  venite  in  Bethlehem. 

"  Cho.  Natum  videte, 
Regem  angelorum, 
Venite  adoremus, 
Dominum." 

(2)  Social  Religious  Experience  as  Emotional.  —  In 
religious  experience,  besides  action,  there  is  emotion  and 
thought  which  we  should  rightly  call  social.  It  is  difficult, 
as  we  said  before,  to  separate  these  three  varieties ;  e.g. 
at  a  revival  meeting,  the  singing  together  tends  to  increase 
the  social  emotion.  The  emotional  suggestibility  of  a 
mass  of  people  appears  at  a  revival  meeting  where  the 
moving  appeal  of  the  speaker  arouses  the  emotion  at  first 
of  one  or  two,  which  emotion  gradually  spreads  like  a 
contagion  through  the  crowd,  and  one  after  another  rises 
and  responds  to  the  appeal  to  give  himself  to  Jesus,  i.e.  he 
''gets  religion ''  or  is  '^ converted. ''  Religious  emotion  of 
the  crowd  is  proverbial  and  has  led  to  religious  persecu- 
tions, the  stoning  and  crucifying  of  the  prophets,  and  to 
religious  wars. 

This  social  consciousness  is  not  the  consciousness  of  the 
separate  individuals  of  the  group  taken  apart  from  the 
group.  To  quote  Le  Bon  in  regard  to  what  he  calls  a 
psychological  crowd :  — 

"Whoever  be  the  individuals  that  compose  it,  however  like  or  un- 
like be  their  mode  of  life,  their  occupations,  their  character  or  their 
intelligence,  the  fact  that  they  have  been  transformed  into  a  crowd 
puts  them  in  possession  of  a  sort  of  collective  mind  which  makes  them 
feel,  think,  and  act  in  a  manner  quite  different  from  that  in  which 
each  individual  would  feel,  think,  and  act  were  he  in  a  state  of  isola- 
tion. There  are  certain  ideas  and  feelings  which  do  not  come  into 
being,  or  do  not  transform  themselves  into  acts  except  in  the  case  of 
individuals  forming  a  crowd."  ^ 

1  Gustave  Le  Bon,  "The  Crowd." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   NATURE  115 

(3)  Social  Experience  as  Revealed  in  what  we  may  call 
Public  Thought.  —  Generally,  however,  the  social  religious 
experience  imphes  not  merely  f  eehng  together  but  thinking 
together.  To  be  sure,  an  idea  and  also  an  emotion  must 
start  with  some  individual,  but  this  fact  itself  has  its  social 
imphcations.  The  ideas  of  an  Augustine,  Luther,  or  Wes- 
ley must  become  socially  accepted  before  they  can  result 
in  the  modern  Cathohc  Church,  the  Protestant  Reforma- 
tion, or  in  Methodism.  It  is  the  thought  of  the  '^pubhc 
self ''  —  here  the  pubHc  religious  self  —  which  is  embodied 
in  the  rehgious  organizations  and  institutions  of  society. 
For  without  this  which  Professor  Baldwin  calls  ''a  common 
self -thought  situation"  cooperation  is  impossible.  Here 
we  have  the  basis  of  the  Christian  church,  which  is  of  two 
tjrpes :  — 

A.  The  church  of  authority  where  the  public  self  is  a  limited  self, 
represented  by  the  clergy.  To  the  rules  and  dogmas  established  by  early 
councils  all  churches  and  individuals  belonging  to  them,  have  to  submit. 
The  Catholic  church  seems  always  to  have  been  a  social-political 
organization,  more  interested  in  saving  souls  for  the  church,  that  the 
church  may  be  triumphant  on  earth  as  well  as  in  heaven,  than  in  the 
saving  of  the  individual  as  such,  i.e.  in  his  personal  righteousness. 

B.  In  the  second  type,  the  Puritan  churches  and  their  descendants, 
the  people  themselves  are  the  church.  The  commonwealth  of  the 
Pilgrims  was  a  religious  commonwealth,  the  governor  himself  bemg 
the  minister  to  start  with.  The  individual  is  responsible  to  God.  The 
religious  sanction  is  identified  with  the  ethical ;  nevertheless,  it  is  a 
social  experience  because  the  ethical  individual  is  a  public  or  universal 
self.  In  this  type  of  church  we  have  a  group  of  people  united  to 
further  the  spiritual  interests  of  the  community  and  of  humanity. 

Again,  the  crusades  are  a  good  example  of  a  social 
rehgious  experience  in  which  these  three  varieties,  of 
social  emotion,  thought,  and  actions,  are  united. 

(4)  The  second  type  of  church  mentioned  above  leads 
us  over  directly  to  our  fourth  variety  of  social  religious 
experience,  namely,  the  universalization  or  socialization  of 
the  will.  Religious  experience  on  the  motor  side  is  ex- 
pressed in  Christian  experience  as  "following  Jesus"  or 


116  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

doing  the  will  of  God.  Concretely,  this  reduces  almost  to 
Kant's  categorical  imperative.  ''So  act  that  the  princi- 
ple of  your  action  could  be  a  law  for  all  intelligent  beings/' 
or  ''act  as  your  completest,  your  ethical,  your  public  self 
demands."  This  means  not  merely  so  to  act  as  not  to 
injure  or  interfere  with  the  rights  of  others,  but  act  so  as 
to  serve  them,  so  as  to  spread  insight,  to  help  them  to 
develop  their  completest  selfhood.  This  is  clearly  a  social 
experience,  even  though  it  may  seem  at  times  to  ignore  or 
deny  certain  special,  social  acts,  for  the  sake  of  those  which 
are  really  more  deeply  social.  When  a  number  of  people 
unite  together  as  in  a  church  for  a  social  end,  this  experi- 
ence becomes  more  completely  social.  It  is  rehgious  as 
well  as  ethical,  when  those  who  have  the  experience  think 
of  it  as  a  work  which  they  are  doing  with  God,  or  as  in  his 
sight  and  in  the  service  of  his  children,  as 

"  Do  justice  and  love  mercy  and  walk  humbly  with  thy  God." 

That  is,  while  it  is  identical  as  to  will,  it  is  differentiated 
in  thought  and  feeUng  from  a  purely  ethical  experience. 
(5)  The  expressions  of  religious  experience  in  songs 
and  prayers  of  the  church,  and  in  the  maxims  of  rehgious 
teachers  lead  us  to  beheve  that  there  is  a  consciousness  of 
mystical  union  with  God  which  also  includes  one's  fellow- 
men.  This  "Unio  Mystica"  which  includes  the  neighbor 
is  the  mysticism  of  St.  Paul  and  of  the  fourth  Gospel :  — 

"Abide  in  me  and  I  in  you.  As  the  branch  cannot  bear  fruit  of 
itself,  except  it  abide  in  the  vine ;  so  neither  can  ye,  except  ye  abide 
in  me.     I  am  the  vine ;  ye  are  the  branches."  * 

"They  are  thine :  and  all  things  that  are  mine  are  thine,  and  thine 
are  mine."  ^ 

"...  that  they  may  be  one  even  as  we  are  one."  ^ 

"...  even  as  thou,  Father,  art  in  me,  and  I  in  thee,  that  they  also 
may  be  in  us."  '' 

"If  ye  keep  my  commandments  ye  shall  abide  in  my  love."  ^ 

» St.  John  15 : 4  and  5.  ^  gt.  John  17 :  10. 

» St.  John  17 :  11.  *  St.  John  17 :  21. 

6  St.  John  15: 10. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE 


ITS  NATURE 


117 


"So  we  who  are  many,  are  one  body  in  Christ,  and  severally  mem- 
bers one  of  another."  ^ 

"We  who  are  many,  are  made  one  through  partaking  of  the  bread."  ^ 
"Diversities  of  gifts  but  the  one  spirit.    But  all  these  worketh  the 
one  and  the  same  Spirit,  dividing  to  each  one  severally  even  as  he 
wUl."  3 

"0  Love,  O  Life,  one  faith,  one  sight, 
Thy  presence  maketh  one."  * 

This  is  also  the  mysticism  of  the  prayer  of  St.  Augustine : — 

"O  Thou  Good  omnipotent  which  so  carest  for  every  one  of  us,  as 
if  thou  carest  for  him  alone;  and  so  for  all,  as  if  all  were  but  one! 
Blessed  is  the  man  who  loveth  Thee,  and  his  friend  in  Thee,  and  his 
enemy  for  Thee." 

Again,  the  social  rehgious  consciousness  appears  in  the 
conception  of  the  Church  Universal ;  the  City  of  God,  the 
union  of  all  the  faithful :  — 

From  the  Catholic  Mass :  — 

"Behold,  Lord,  we  all  here,  though  of  different  conditions,  yet 
united  by  charity,  as  members  of  that  one  body,  of  which  thy  dear 
Son  is  the  Head,  present  to  thee  in  this  bread  and  wine,  the  symbols 
of  our  perfect  union." 

"Lamb  of  God  who  taketh  away  the  sins  of  the  world,  have  mercy 
upon  us." 

And,  in  general,  there  is  an  expression  of  the  communal 
consciousness  in  the  Psahns,  the  hymn  book  of  the  second 
temple,  where  the  experience  given  is  that  of  the  servant 
of  the  Lord  (Israel  being  used  collectively) ;  in  the  prayers, 
litany,  '^Te  Deum,"  etc.,  in  the  prayer  books  of  the 
church ;  in  the  sacred  festivals ;  in  revival  meetings ;  in 
the  sacrament  of  the  Eucharist;  in  the  communion  of 
the  saints. 

This  social  experience  leads  to  a  consideration  of 
the  type  of  the  rehgious  consciousness  as  found  in  a 
church.  It  may  be  an  individual  experience,  but  it  is 
more  often,  I  beheve,  social,  and  includes  many  of  the 


*  Romans,  12 : 5  and  following  verses. 
»lCor.  12:4, 11. 


2  1  Cor.  10:17. 

4  Whittier. 


118  THE    DRAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

above-mentioned  varieties.  To  the  little  child  the  first 
going  to  church  is  a  social  affair.  He  imagines  stories 
about  the  persons  with  whose  faces  he  grows  famihar 
Sunday  after  Sunday,  and  this  becomes  a  part  of  his  ex- 
perience which  he  never  quite  loses  —  at  least  in  that  par- 
ticular church  building.  Then  going  to  church  or  Sun- 
day school  means  to  him  in  great  measure  the  singing  and 
doing  things  with  his  fellows.  This  is,  of  course,  not  al- 
ways a  religious  experience  at  all.  The  psalms  and 
prayers,  the  wonderful  ritual  of  the  Catholic  church,  which, 
springing  from  human  need  and  aspiration,  has  grown  as 
the  grass  grows,  gathering  to  itself  the  beauty  and  mystery 
and  pity  of  ages  of  human  experience  and  worship,  —  all 
this  weaves  itself  into  the  individual's  own  experience  and 
transforms  it  into  a  social  consciousness.  The  peasant 
woman  who  enters  a  great  cathedral,  who  tells  her  beads, 
and  dips  her  fingers  in  holy  water,  brings  here  perhaps 
her  personal  need,  yet  she  comes  as  to  a  place  where  other 
sufferers,  wanderers,  sinners,  and  doubters  have  come  for 
help,  light,  forgiveness.^ 

In  general,  the  psahns,  hymns,  prayers,  the  rites  and 
ceremonies  as  used  in  pubhc  worship  give  expression,  as 
it  seems  to  me,  to  collective  experience.  The  adult  con- 
sciousness in  a  church  is  probably  not  particularly  aware  of 
others  as  special  individuals,  but  as  his  fellows  who  are 
united  with  him  in  a  common  experience.  And  this  is 
perhaps  one  of  the  chief  argimaents  for  church  going. 

"Remember  not,  Lord,  our  offenses,  neither  take  thou  revenge  of 
our  sins;  spare  us,  good  Lord,  spare  thy  people  whom  thou  hast  re- 
deemed by  the  most  precious  blood  of  thy  Son  and  be  not  angry  with 
us  forever." 

"Spare  us,  good  Lord."  ^ 

What  is  truest,  perhaps,  is  that  in  these  religious  ser- 
vices the  individual  expresses  his  own  through  a  universal 

1  See  Hawthorne's  case  of  Hilda  in  St.  Peter's  at  Rome,  in  "The 
Marble  Faun." 

2  The  Litany. 


THE   WAY  OF   LIFE  —  ITS  NATURE  119 

experience.  As  in  all  religious  experience,  so  here  the 
individual  is  reaching  out  for  the  ''more,"  the  ideal  larger 
life  which  is  to  complete  his  own.  As  he  takes  his  part  in 
the  common  service  and  acts  of  worship,  he  enters  into 
the  common  religious  inheritance.  New  insights  come 
to  him.  A  new  self  is  born  within  him.  He  is  one  with 
his  fellows,  but  one  only  through  the  common  relation  to 
an  ideal  good,  "  a  spiritual  presence  amongst  them  which 
restores,  redeems,  transforms,  inspires,  and  elevates,  and 
to  which,  with  the  uttermost  devotion,  the  worshippers 
consecrate  their  renewed  powers." 

Other  instances  of  the  social  religious  consciousness 
are:  — 

(1)  The  notion  of  the  efficacy  of  the  prayers  and  intercessions  of 
the  saints  (dead  and  living)  of  which  so  much  is  made  in  the  Roman 
Catholic  church.    Illustrations  of  this  appear  in  Dante's  "  Purgatorio." 

(2)  The  Roman  Catholic  doctrine  of  "merit";  The  conception 
here  is  that  merit  attained  by  individual  good  deeds  accrues  to  the 
church  as  a  store  of  merit. 

(3)  In  aU  those  dreams  of  social  Utopias,  a  recovered  golden  age, 
the  social  programme  of  the  prophets  for  a  redeemed  Israel  and  the 
accompanying  conception  of  a  Messianic  kingdom,  a  New  Jerusalem, 
the  kingdom  of  God,  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  In  the  little  Christian 
communities  or  churches  of  the  Apostolic  age  which  were  bound  to- 
gether by  a  sense  of  the  living  presence  of  Christ  in  their  midst  and 
by  a  common  bond  of  personal  loyalty  to  him,  something  of  this 
community  consciousness  seems  actually  to  have  been  realized ;  and 
it  has  been  attempted  again  and  again  in  religious  brotherhoods  of 
every  age. 

Again,  other  instances  are  the  beatific  vision  of  "the 
great  white  rose  of  Paradise'^  described  by  Dante,  at  the 
close  of  the  Divine  Comedy;  and  the  "City  of  Light"  of 
the  Ethical  Culture  movement  has  surely  a  religious 

I  character,  though  it  claims  to  make  the  only  possible 
rehgion  identical  with  social  ethics. 


Have  you  heard  of  the  golden  city 
Mentioned  in  the  legends  old? 
Everlasting  light  shines  o'er  it. 
Wondrous  tales  of  it  are  told. 


120  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

"  Only  righteous  men  and  women 
Dwell  within  its  gleaming  walls, 
Wrong  is  banished  from  its  borders. 
Justice  reigns  supreme  o'er  all. 

"  Do  you  ask  where  is  that  City 
Where  the  perfect  right  doth  reign? 
I  must  answer,  1  must  tell  you. 
That  you  seek  its  site  in  vain. 

"  You  may  roam  o'er  hill  and  valley, 
You  may  pass  o'er  land  and  sea. 
You  may  search  the  wide  earth  over ; 
'Tis  a  City  yet  to  be! 

"  We  are  builders  of  that  City, 
All  our  joys  and  all  our  groans 
Help  to  rear  its  shining  ramparts ; 
All  our  lives  are  building  stones."  * 

Even  monasticism,  that  citadel  of  individualism  in 
religion,  and  even  the  monasticism  of  an  individualistic 
type  of  reUgion  as  Buddhism  tends  to  be,  has  its  social 
character  in  the  inner  Ufe  of  the  monastery,  —  in  the 
common  meal  and  common  acts  of  worship ;  still  more  is 
the  social  found  in  the  outside  activities,  educational  and 
missionary. 

Also,  in  the  humanitarianism  of  Buddhism  we  find  the 
social  rehgious  consciousness. 

The  ancient  Roman  faith,  with  its  Lares  and  Penates, 
and  its  popular  festivals  is  an  instance  of  a  social  religion 
very  similar  to  patriotism.  The  Stoicism  of  the  Roman 
emperor,  Marcus  AureHus,  is  social  on  a  higher  ethical  level. 

"The  intelligence  of  the  universe  is  social.  Thou  seest  not  it  has 
subordinated,  coordinated,  and  assigned  to  everything  its  proper 
portion,  and  has  brought  together  into  concord  with  one  another  the 
things  which  are  best. 

"Whether  the  universe  is  a  concourse  of  atoms  or  a  system.  .  .  . 
I  am  a  part  of  the  whole  which  is  governed  by  nature  and  I  am  inti- 
mately related  to  the  parts  which  are  of  the  same  kind  with  my- 
self. .  .  .  Inasmuch  as  I  am  in  a  manner  intimately  related  to  the 
parts  which  are  of  the  same  kind  with  myself,  I  shall  do  nothing  un- 

» Felix  Adler. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   NATURE  121 

social,  but  I  shall  rather  turn  all  my  efforts  to  the  common  interest 
and  direct  them  from  the  contrary.  .  .  .  Until  the  end  comes,  what 
is  sufficient? 

''Why,  what  else  than  to  venerate  the  gods  and  bless  them,  and  to 
do  good  to  men,  and  to  practise  tolerance  and  self-restraint."  ^ 

We  saw  in  the  preceding  chapter  that  religious  experi- 
ence consists  of  three  elements,  viz.,  first,  the  sense  of  need, 
sometimes  of  misery  and  sin  —  a  divided  consciousness ; 
second,  a  dream,  a  vision,  even  at  times  a  concrete  realiza- 
tion of  what  is  meant  by  salvation,  peace,  unity ;  third, 
following  these,  the  belief  that  the  misery  can  be  perma- 
nently overcome  and  the  goal  won  through  some  process 
of  attainment  —  a  way  of  life,  or  a  way  of  salvation. 
Analyzing,  as  we  have  done  in  the  present  chapter,  this 
third  element  which  appears  as  that  element  in  rehgious 
experience  which  unites  the  other  two  and  is  in  some  ways, 
in  actual  hfe,  the  most  developed  and  important  of  the 
three,  we  find  that  as  a  particular  experience  there  is  no 
one  way  of  winning  salvation,  but  that  in  its  essence  ^^the 
way^'  of  the  rehgious  hfe  is  an  experience  at  once  appre- 
ciative and  active,  mystical  and  ethical,  individual  and 
social.  The  highest  type  of  religion,  or  religious  experi- 
ence in  its  wholeness  consists  of  all  these  experiences  in 
their  unity.  But  how  it  is  possible  that  such  opposing  and 
conflicting  experiences  should  be  unified,  we  are  not  able 
to  understand.  Yet  that  the  religious  consciousness  is 
such  an  harmony  of  many  various  experiences  in  one,  the 
lives  of  the  saints  of  religion  throughout  the  ages  reveal 
to  us.  It  is  made  manifest  in  such  very  different  types  as 
Gotama  and  St.  Paul,  St.  Francis  and  St.  Thomas  Aquinas, 
St.  Augustine,  Savonarola  and  Luther,  Wesley  and  Chan- 

Lning,  Emerson  and  Brooks. 
How  did  religion  come  to  these  men,  or  how  did  they 
win  it?     In  a  word,  what  are  the  sources  of  rehgious  ex- 
perience?    Let  us  now  see  if  we  can  find  light  by  con- 
sidering the  Way  of  Life  as  to  its  source. 
1  ''Meditations  of  Marcus  Aurelius,"  tr.  by  George  Long. 
I 


"I  thirst  for  truth, 
But  shall  not  drink  it  till  I  reach  the  source." 

—  Robert  Browning. 

"  And  so  I  think  that  the  last  lesson  of  life,  the  choral  song  which 
rises  'from  all  angels,*  is  a  voluntary  obedience,  a  necessitated  free- 
dom. .  .  .  When  man's  mind  is  illuminated,  when  his  heart  is  kind, 
he  throws  himself  joyfully  into  the  sublime  order  and  does  with  knowl- 
edge, what  the  stones  do  by  structure." 

—  R.  W.  Emerson. 


CHAPTER  IV 
The  Way  of  Life  —  Its  Sources 

The  illustrations  of  religious  experience  given  in  the 
preceding  chapter  suggest  that  the  ''Way"  to  salvation 
is  no  way  J  one  and  simple,  in  the  sense  of  a  unity  without 
diversity,  but  that  it  (the  way)  may  be  as  various  as 
human  experience  itself. 

Salvation,  for  example,  may  be  found  through  faith 
(see  the  teachings  of  Luther) ;  it  may  be  found  by  re- 
liance upon  the  authority  of  a  larger  body  like  the  historic 
church  (the  case  of  Newman) ;  by  self-remmciation  and 
escape  from  the  world  —  the  ''Via  Negativa"  of  the 
oriental  mystics;  by  concentration  upon  the  thought  of 
God  and  by  obedience  to  the  inner  light  as  in  the  Quakers 
and  other  Christian  mystics ;  salvation  may  be  through 
joyful  self-surrender  to  the  personaUty  of  Christ  and 
through  the  acceptance  of  his  atoning  blood  (see  the 
hymns  of  the  early  Christian  church) ;  it  may  be  by  the 
way  of  asceticism  and  of  service  to  the  brethren,  i.e.  the 
way  of  poverty  and  charity  of  St.  Francis  of  Assisi ;  it 
may  be  through  works  of  merit  and  by  character :  "This 
do  and  thou  shalt  Uve'^ ;  it  may  be  the  way  of  love :  "Her 
sins  which  were  many  are  forgiven  her  for  she  loved 
much" ;  it  may  be  through  absolute  devotion  to  a  rec- 
ognized and  freely  chosen  ideal  good :  "Whosoever  hath 
forsaken  father  or  mother  for  my  sake  shall  inherit  eternal 
Hfe"  —  by  all  these  various  paths,  men  have  actually 
found  the  way  of  life. 

In  this  diversity  of  concrete  experience,  however,  two 
principal,  contrasting  trends  or  oppositions  appear; 
namely,  the  opposition  between  the  mystical  and  ethical 

123 


124  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

experience  and  the  opposition  between  the  individual  and 
social  experience.  These  general  types  appear  as  ele- 
ments or  phases  of  reUgious  experience  itself.  All  these 
varieties  belong  in  the  whole  which  religion  is.  Yet 
they  are  in  conflict  one  with  another,  and  so  far  we  have 
not  much  hght  as  to  how  these  oppositions  can  be  rec- 
onciled. We  might  hope  to  get  help  towards  the  solution 
of  the  rehgious  problem  from  a  consideration  of  the  later 
oppositions  in  our  series  (given  on  page  85,  Chap.  Ill) ; 
namely,  those  oppositions  which  relate  to  the  forms  of 
reUgious  experience  and  those  which  relate  to  its  source, 
but  when  we  analyze  these  oppositions,  we  shall  discover 
a  tension  and  conflict  similar  to  that  which  we  have 
already  met  with. 


Let  us  consider  first  the  question  as  to  the  source  of  the 
experience  of  salvation.  How  does  one,  in  truth,  find  the 
Way  of  Life?  What  is  its  source?  For  instance,  is  the 
individual  saved  by  divine  grace  or  by  personal  merit? 
This  is  an  old,  old  problem  which  appears  again  and  again 
in  the  history  of  religion. 

Grace  and  Merit.  —  While  this  opposition  clearly  is 
related  to  the  mystical  and  ethical  opposition  as  well  as 
to  the  individual  and  social  opposition,  yet  the  relation  is 
not  a  perfectly  clean-cut  and  simple  one.  For  to  be  saved 
by  grace  means,  on  the  one  hand,  self-abandonment  to  an 
inner  and  immediate  experience.  The  grace'  of  God  is  an 
indwelUng  presence,  that  which  is  emphasized  in  Brahman- 
istic  teaching  as  the  '* Inner  Self,"  the  'inward  Ruler.'' 
It  is  a  light  to  guide,  yet  it  is 

"A  light  which  never  was  on  sea  or  land." 

And  yet,  inward  and  indwelling  as  this  ''grace"  is,  it  is 
not  something  in  the  individual's  own  power.  "Not  of 
myself  or  through  my  own  deed,"  says  in  effect  St.  Paul, 
"have  I  overcome  sin  and  won  salvation  or  righteousness 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  125 

of  the  Christ-life,  but  rather  through  the  grace  of  God,  or 
through  '^  Christ  who  is  in  me."  The  man  who  prays  to 
be  saved  by  the  grace  of  God  goes  humbly  to  the  altar. 
He  does  not  rely  upon  his  own  strength  or  desert ;  hence, 
in  a  sense,  this  ^' grace"  is  outside  of,  or  beyond,  him,  and 
in  so  far  it  appears  as  a  social  rather  than  an  individual 
experience  and  condition.  The  individuaFs  self-abandon- 
ment to  the  divine  grace  is  to  something  more  or  greater 
than  himself.     For  example,  as  an  illustration  the  hymn  — 

"Just  as  I  am,  without  one  plea." 

This  dependency  upon  divine  grace  is  the  meaning,  I  take 
it,  of  all  those  Christian  hymns  which  pray  for  the  coining 
of  the  Holy  Spirit,  —  such  hymns  as  the  following  familiar 

ones :  — 

"Veni,  Sancte  Spiritus; 
Da  virtutis  meritum 
Da  salutis  exitum 
Da  perenne  gaudium." 

or  "Veni,  Creator  Spiritus." 

"Light  of  life,  seraphic  fire." 

—  Charles  Wesley. 

"Thou  Grace  Divine,  encircling  all." 

—  E.   SCUDDER. 

"O  spirit  of  the  living  God ! 
In  all  thy  plenitude  of  Grace." 

—  J.  Montgomery. 

Illustrations  may  be  found  in  prayers  as  well,  notably  in 
those  of  St.  Augustine  and  of  the  ^^  Imitation." 

Although  called  by  a  different  name,  this  sense  of  de- 
pendence upon,  and  appeal  to,  divine  grace  and  power 
appears  in  all  rehgions. 

"Nothing,  O  mighty  Lord,  is  strong  before  thee. 
Do  what  thou  wilt  do,  thou  who  hast  grown  so  strong." 

—  From  the  "Vedic  Hymns." 

"May  that  grace  of  yours  by  which  you  help  the  wretched  across 
all  anguish,  and  by  which  you  deliver  the  worshipper  from  the  reviler, 
come  hither,  0  Maruts.     May  your  favor  approach  us." 

—  "Prayer  to  the  Maruts,  the  Storm  Gods." 


126  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Grace  in  Upanishads.  —  The  Upanishads  teach  that 
peace  and  salvation  come  through  enhghtemnent  —  the 
awakening  of  the  individual  from  the  bUndness  in  which  he 
saw  himself  as  separate  from  Brahma  the  All,  to  an  im- 
mediate intuitive  union  of  the  real  oneness  of  the  individual 
self  with  the  Eternal.  He  is  saved  because  seeing  his  one- 
ness with  the  Eternal,  for  him  there  are  no  more  incarna- 
tions into  the  world  of  sense  and  separateness,  and  also 
he  is  beyond  works. 

"Now  within  this  town  of  Brahma  is  a  dwelling;  a  little  lotus 
flower;  within  this  is  a  little  space ;  what  is  within  men  should  inquire 
after,  yea,  should  seek  to  know.  ...  If  they  should  say  to  him: 
*  If  all  being  and  all  desire  are  lodged  in  this  town  of  Brahma  what 
remains  thereof  when  old  age  comes  upon  it  or  it  dissolves?'  He 
shall  say :  *  This  grows  not  old  with  his  aging  nor  is  it  smitten  by  slay- 
ing of  him.  This  is  the  true  town  of  Brahma.  In  it  are  lodged  the 
Desires.  It  is  the  Self  free  from  evil,  ageless,  deathless,  sorrowless, 
hungerless,  thirstless,  real  of  desire,  real  of  purpose.  ...  So  they 
who  depart  without  finding  here  the  Self  and  these  real  Desires,  walk 
not  as  they  list  in  any  worlds;  but  they  who  depart  after  finding 
here  the  Self  and  these  real  Desires,  walk  as  they  list  in  all 
worlds.  .  .  .* 

"  Now  that  perfect  Peace,  rising  up  from  this  body,  enters  into 
the  Supreme  Light  and  issues  forth  in  its  own  semblance.  '  This  is  the 
Self,'  said  he,  Hhis  is  the  deathless,  the  fearless;  this  is  Brahma.  .  .  .' 

"  Now  the  Self  is  the  dyke  holding  asunder  the  worlds  that  they 
fall  not  one  into  another.  Over  this  dyke  pass  not  day  and  night,  nor 
old  age,  nor  death,  nor  sorrow,  nor  good  deeds,  nor  bad  deeds.  All 
ills  turn  away  thence;  for  this  Brahma-world  is  void  of  ill.  Therefore 
in  sooth  the  blind,  after  passing  over  this  dyke  is  no  more  blind,  the 
wounded  no  more  wounded,  the  sick  no  more  sick.  Therefore  in 
sooth  even  Night  after  passing  over  this  dyke  issues  forth  as  Day ; 
for  in  this  Brahma-world  is  everlasting  light."  ^ 

"  Verily  this  great  unborn  Self  it  is  that  is  compact  of  understanding 
amid  the  life-breaths  that  lie  in  the  ether  within  the  heart,  master 
of  all,  lord  of  all,  ruler  of  all.  He  becomes  not  greater  by  a  good  deed 
nor  less  by  an  ill  deed.  .  .  .  This  Self  is  Nay,  Nay :  not  to  be  grasped, 
for  He  is  not  grasped ;  not  to  be  broken,  for  He  is  not  broken ;  un- 
clinging,  for  He  clings  not;  He  is  not  bound,  He  trembles  not.  He 
takes  no  hurt.     One  (who  knows  this)  is  overcome  neither  by  having 

*  Chandogyga  Upanishad,  VIII. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES 


127 


done  evil  for  His  sake  nor  by  having  done  good  for  His  sake ;  he  over- 
comes both ;  work  done  and  work  not  done  grieve  him  not."  * 

This  is  said  by  a  verse :  — 

"The  Brahman's  constant  majesty  by  works 
Nor  waxes  more,  nor  wanes.    This  shall  he  trace ; 
This  known,  ill  deeds  defile  him  nevermore." 

No  effort  of  the  individual,  then,  will  bring  about  the 
saving  enlightenment.  It  is  accomphshed  through  the 
inner  self,  but  this,  the  true  Self,  is  Brahma  the  All. 

The  Book  of  Psalms.  —  Although  the  Psalms  lay 
stress  on  the  value  of  the  righteous  hfe  as  a  condition  of 
salvation,  yet  more  than  anything  else  are  they  an  appeal 
out  of  need  and  anguish  to  a  divine  helper.  The  domi- 
nant note  is  trust  in  God,  —  the  rock  and  strong  tower  of 
defence,  the  helper,  the  guide  and  redeemer.  He  will  not 
let  his  servant  Israel  perish.  In  the  end  the  righteous  shall 
be  deUvered  from  the  hands  of  his  enemies ;  because  he 
has  trusted  in  God,  He  will  watch  over  him  till  the 
calamity  is  past. 

When  we  consider  the  historical  situation,  we  get  light 
on  the  content  of  these  songs.  Israel's  dream  of  salva- 
tion grows  out  of,  and  is  colored  by,  the  longing  of  an  op- 
pressed people  to  be  free  and  to  return  to  the  promised 
land  where,  under  the  leadership  of  a  prophet  or  king  of 
the  Davidic  line,  they  should  loyally  serve  Jahwe  and 
should  prosper.  Almost  any  psalm  will  serve  as  an  il- 
lustration :  — 

"Hear  my  cry,  0  God ; 
Attend  unto  my  prayer. 

"From  the  end  of  the  earth  will  I  call 
unto  thee ;  when  my  heart  is  overwhelmed : 
Lead  me  to  the  rock  that  is  higher  than  I. 

"^For  thou  hast  been  a  refuge  for  me ; 
a  strong  tower  from  the  enemy. 

*  Brihad-aranyaka  Upanishads,  IV.  IV.  22-23. 


128  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

"I  will  dwell  in  thy  tabernacle  for  ever : 
I  will  take  refuge  in  the  covert  of  thy  wings  (Selah). 

"For  thou,  O  God,  hast  heard  my  vows; 
Thou  hast  given  me  the  heritage  of  those  that 
fear  thy  name."  ^ 

In  the  Christian  church,  it  is  held  grace  may  come  through 
some  immediate  revelation  but  also  through  the  prayers 
and  intercessions  of  the  saints,  i.e.  it  has  a  social  aspect ; 
and  from  our  modern  point  of  view,  grace  seems  mediated 
to  the  individual  in  all  sorts  of  ways ;  through  Nature  (to 
such  a  poet  as  Wordsworth,  for  example ;  while  to  a  poet 
of  the  Walt  Whitman  type.  Life  or  Experience  itself,  is 
the  bearer  of  the  gifts  of  grace) ;  through  social  institu- 
tions —  (the  rites  of  the  church,  especially  Catholic  cele- 
bration of  the  Mass) ;  and  above  all,  through  the  presence 
of  grace  in  heroic  and  lovely  human  personalities.^ 

Augustine's  Doctrine  of  Grace .^  —  Augustine's  doc- 
trine of  grace  grew  out  of  his  own  experience  interpreted 
in  the  light  of  Neo-Platonism  and  the  teachings  of  Paul 
and  Manicheism  which  had  influenced  his  youth  and 
from  which  he  never  quite  freed  himself.  Augustine's 
early  life  had  been  a  long  struggle  with  bad  tendencies 
and  habits  which  he  had  been  unable  to  master.  In  the 
experience  of  his  own  perturbed  spirit  he  finds  the  paradox 
of  the  will  and  of  sin  over  against  the  paradox  of  grace. 
The  will  knows  the  good  which  is  in  truth  the  heart  of  its 
own  longing.  In  a  way,  therefore,  the  will  has  the  power 
of  choosing  the  good ;  therefore  the  evil  will  is  responsible 
by  a  kind  of  defect  for  not  so  choosing.  The  '^summum 
bonum"  is  that  which  ought  to  be  the  motive  of  the  will 
and  which  should  lead  in  the  realizing  of  the  good  in  life, 
i.e.  by  changing  the  mere  longing  of  the  will  into  a  reality. 
The  ought  has  to  lay  hold  on  the  will  as  love  of  the  good, 

1  Psalm  61. 

2  See  the  case  of  Silas  Marner,  where  "the  instrument  of  grace" 
was  a  little  child. 

*  Harnack's  "History  of  Dogma,"  from  which  this  account  is  taken. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  129 

i.e.  through  the  gift  of  the  Holy  Spirit  or  divine  grace. 
Then  this  "beata  necessitas  boni"  becomes  the  true  free- 
dom of  the  will  because  it  sets  it  free  from  the  impulses  of 
the  lower  life ;  for  the  ought,  or  the  willing  of  the  good  will, 
has  now  become  the  only  love  of  the  will  —  hence  '' Volun- 
tas" becomes  ^^Caritas."  In  yielding  to  the  call  of  divine 
grace  salvation  is  attained.  The  bad  will  Augustine 
identifies  with  the  doctrine  of  evil  substance,  which  notion 
he  retained  from  Manichean  dualism.  Through  this 
influence  the  sin  of  the  will  becomes  to  him  original  sin  — 
a  corrupt  nature  inherited  from  Adam.  Man  cannot  free 
himself  from  this  inherited  evil  through  his  own  will  and 
merit.  He  knows  the  good  and  "partly  wills  and  partly 
does  not  will"  to  follow  it.  Divine  Grace  sets  him  free 
to  follow  the  true  law  of  the  will,  but  this  grace  is  a  gift 
and  chooses  whom  it  will. 

Augustine's  scheme  of  redemption  is  bound  up  with 
his  dogma  of  the  church.  It  is  to  or  through  the  organi- 
zation and  rites  of  the  earthly  church  that  the  transcen- 
dent grace  becomes  visible  and  efficacious.  The  church 
is  the  body  of  Christ.  Man's  own  righteousness  avails 
nothing  if  he  is  outside  of  the  unity  of  the  church .  For  the 
bond  of  this  unity  is  not  in  purity  of  life,  not  in  righteous 
acts  and  individual  merit,  but  in  the  acceptance  through  love 
of  the  righteousness  of  Christ.  That  is,  the  bond  of  unity 
is  by  the  spirit  of  love  to  Christ  and  the  sense  of  fraternity. 
The  only  true  and  holy  Catholic  church  is,  to  be  sure,  an 
ideal,  for  this  bond  of  brotherhood  and  this  community 
of  the  saints  are  never  completely  realized  in  the  earthly 
church.  The  sacraments  of  the  church  are,  however,  a 
magically  efl&cacious  means  of  obtaining  grace  and  sal- 
vation. But  the  church,  with  its  organizations  and  rites, 
is  a  social  institution.  Hence  grace  appears  partly,  at 
least,  as  a  social  experience. 

A  study  of  the  experiences  of  sudden  conversion,  but 
also,  however,  of  a  gradual  growth  in  grace  (as  in  a  life 
like  that  of  T.  H.  Green)  reveals  the  fact  that  salvation 


130  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

by  grace  is  an  aesthetic  and  mystical  experience.  It  has 
been  held  that  the  coming  of  the  divine  grace  or  the  seizure 
of  a  man  by  the  divine  spirit,  manifests  itself  variously 
as  trance,  frenzy,  ecstasy,  speaking  with  tongues,  rapture, 
enlightenment;  and  without  this  ''inward  witness"  of 
some  such  experience,  some  Christian  sects,  as  well  as  some 
ancient  historical  religions,  deny  the  name  rehgion.  The 
experience  of  grace,  as  we  learn  from  Paul,  does  not  come 
through  obedience  to  external  forms,  by  keeping  all  the 
points  of  the  law,  or  by  works.  It  means  "  being  trans- 
formed "  into  a  ''new  creature,"  through  letting  the  hfe 
of  the  spirit  spring  up,  so  to  speak,  in  the  soul.  And  then, 
following  the  complete  giving  up  of  the  individual  self  to 
the  guidance  of  this  experience,  comes  the  finding  by  him 
of  a  wonderful  peace  and  joy  —  the  peace  and  joy  of  God, 
and  of  new  and  larger  insight  into  Hfe's  meaning.  This 
experience  is  a  surprising  thing  —  a  great  discovery  of 
what  it  means  in  reahty  to  live.  This  experience,  then,  is 
mystical,  yet  to  be  saved  by  grace  is  not  merely  a  mystical, 
aesthetic  experience.  As  we  have  already  seen,  it  has 
characteristics  which  make  it  social ;  and  for  a  spiritual 
religion  the  most  excellent  manifestations  of  grace  are 
generally  held  to  be  the  qualities  of  the  moral  life.  So 
that  grace  appears  to  belong,  too,  to  the  realm  of  ethical 
values. 

"  I  can  do  all  things,"  said  Paul,  "  through  Christ  who 
strengtheneth  me."  To  know  God  as  revealed  in  Christ 
meant  for  Paul  a  surrender  to  the  Christ  Hf e ;  but  this 
life  and  acceptance  of  the  Christ  spirit,  —  this  "Spirit 
which  was  in  Christ  Jesus"  — was  a  life  of  self-sacrifice 
and  of  unfaihng  love  to  the  brethren.  Hence  in  Paul's 
account,  not  especially  in  speaking  with  tongues  and  in 
other  signs  and  wonders  is  the  Holy  Spirit  revealed.  The 
gifts  and  graces  of  the  Holy  Spirit  are  moral  gifts ;  and  in 
his  summary  of  the  Christian  Hfe  in  Corinthians  13,  the 
Christ-like  hfe  is  shown  to  be  a  Uf e  of  ethical  value.  Here 
is  the  real  "  witness  of  the  spirit."    And  yet  this  inward 


THE   WAY   OF  LIFE — ITS   SOURCES  131 

spirit  of  heavenly  love  is  for  Paul  '^  a  gift  of  grace."  Some 
strength  not  my  own,  then,  the  religious  man  reports, 
brings  me  peace,  healing,  new  power  and  enthusiasm ;  a 
new  life  is  born  in  me.  This  new  life  redeems  me  from  the 
slavery  of  the  natural  man,  from  wayward  impulses,  from 
bad  habits,  lack  of  self-control,  worldliness,  selfishness, 
and  the  rest ;  and  it  leads  me  to  the  life  of  brotherhood, 
a  life  of  devoted  service  and  atonement,  i.e.  its  truest 
manifestations  are  ethical  and  social. 
Two  hymns  on  grace  follow  :  — 

"0  Love  that  will  not  let  me  go, 

I  rest  my  weary  soul  in  Thee ; 
I  give  Thee  back  the  life  I  owe 
That  in  Thine  ocean  depths  its  flow 

May  richer,  fuller  be.^ 

"0  Light  that  followest  all  my  way, 
I  yield  my  flickering  torch  to  Thee ; 

My  heart  restores  its  borrowed  ray, 

That  in  Thy  sunshine's  blaze  its  day 
May  brighter,  fairer  be. 

"  O  Joy  that  seekest  me  through  pain, 

I  cannot  close  my  heart  to  Thee ; 
I  trace  the  rainbow  through  the  rain. 
And  feel  the  promise  is  not  vain 

That  mom  shall  tearless  be. 

"  0  Cross  that  liftest  up  my  head, 

I  dare  not  ask  to  fly  from  Thee ; 
I  lay  in  dust  life's  glory  dead, 
And  from  the  ground  there  blossoms  red 

Life  that  shall  endless  be." 

"He  leads  us  on  by  paths  we  did  not  know ; 
Upward  He  leads  us,  though  our  steps  be  slow ; 
Though  oft  we  faint  and  falter  on  the  way, 
Though  storms  and  darkness  oft  obscure  the  day, 

Yet  when  the  clouds  are  gone. 

We  know  He  leads  us  on. 

1  George  Matheson,  "  O  Love  that  Will  not  Let  Me  Go." 


132  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

"He  leads  us  on  through  all  the  unquiet  years  ; 
Past  all  our  dreamland  hopes,  and  doubts,  and  fears 
He  guides  our  steps ;  through  all  the  tangled  maze 
Of  losses,  sorrows,  and  overclouded  days 

We  know  His  will  is  done, 

And  still  He  leads  us  on. 

"And  He  at  last  —  after  the  weary  strife, 
After  the  restless  fever  we  call  life. 
After  the  dreariness,  the  aching  pain, 
The  wayward  struggles  which  have  proved  in  vain, 

After  our  toils  are  past  — 

Will  give  us  rest  at  last."  ^ 

The  Doctrine  of  ''Merit."  —  We  are  thus  led  to  see, 
through  such  typical  experiences  as  those  of  Paul  and 
Augustine,  that  the  real  gifts  of  grace  are  gifts  which  belong 
to  the  sphere  of  spiritual  and  ethical  values.  And  this 
brings  us  over  very  naturally  to  a  consideration  of  the 
other  side  of  the  opposition  —  the  side  of  merit.  And  here 
we  must  say  at  once  —  if  eternal  hfe  or  salvation  is  most 
truly  manifested  in  moral  character  and  activity,  these 
qualities  depend  on  individual  effort,  responsibility,  and 
freedom,  i,e.  on  merit.  They  cannot  be  given  from  with- 
out ;  they  must  be  striven  for  by  the  individual  himself. 
In  short,  spiritual  life  is  no  gift;  it  is  an  achievement. 
Paul,  who  at  conversion,  had  received  divine  revelation 
and  grace,  at  the  close  of  his  strenuous  career  says :  — 

"Not  as  if  I  had  already  attained  or  am  already  made  perfect  — 
but  one  thing  I  do,  forgetting  the  things  which  are  behind,  and  stretch- 
ing forward  to  the  things  which  are  before,  I  am  pressing  on  toward 
the  goal  and  unto  the  prize  of  the  high  calling  of  God  in  Christ  Jesus." 

(Phil.  3.) 

For  the  life  of  moral  value  is  a  life  never  completely  won. 
Its  essence  is  'Hhe  glory  of  the  imperfect."  Finality  is 
death.  There  is  ever  beyond  the  open  country  the  un- 
travelled  road  of  a  larger  experience,  of  a  more  abun- 
dant hfe,  the  unmeasured  possibilities  of  a  divine  sonship. 

1  Hu-am  O.  Wiley,  "He  Leads  Us  On." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  133 

The  conclusion  is,  then,  that  salvation  is  something  to 
be  won.  The  doctrine  of  grace  and  the  doctrine  of  merit 
alike  emphasize  the  fact  that  the  essence  of  salvation  is 
an  inward  spiritual  value.  In  neither  case  is  it  an  external 
good  or  gift  of  chance  fortune  or  material  possession. 
But  while  for  the  one  view  this  value  is  a  blessing  bestowed^ 
for  the  other  it  is  a  blessing  won.  But  if  salvation  is  a 
moral  good,  must  not  a  moral  good  of  necessity  be  won? 
What  meaning  has  moral  value  apart  from  individual 
effort?    We  recall  the  case  of  Faust:  — 

"Whoever  strives  unweariedly 
Is  not  beyond  redeeming." 

Salvation  must  be  won  by  me  —  no  other  can  do  it  for 
me.  The  essence  of  moral  hfe  is  in  individual  decision 
and  responsibility.  ''This  I  choose.  This  I  intend." 
''I  can  no  otherwise,"  as  Luther  said. 

Religion  has  not  always  been  ethical.  This  appears 
plainly  in  primitive  religions,  as  we  have  seen.  If  we  want 
a  modern  instance  of  a  reUgion  quite  apart  from  morality, 
I  know  of  no  more  striking  illustration  than  that  given  in 
"The  Story  of  Daniel  Drew,"  Drew,  the  New  York  finan- 
cier who  wrecked  the  Erie  Railroad.  According  to  this 
account,  while  Drew  beheved  it  did  not  pay  in  business  to 
be  rehgious,  still  he  seems  genuinely  to  have  beUeved 
in  keeping  the  Sabbath  strictly,  and  he  loved  to  attend 
church  meetings  regularly.  He  founded  the  Drew  Theo- 
logical Seminary  for  the  glory  of  God.  But  he  thought 
that  a  man^s  life  in  his  home  and  on  Sunday  was  one 
thing,  in  the  business  world  and  on  week-days  another. 
At  the  close  of  his  long  career,  Drew  complained  that 
religious  teaching  at  the  present  day  was  not  what  it 
had  been,  the  ministers  of  religion  were  concerned  too 
much  with  this  world  rather  than  with  other-worldliness. 
He  complains  he  does  not  enjoy  preaching  as  he  used,  for 
''Preachers,"  he  says,  "are  talking  so  everlastingly  about 
this  earth.     I've  done  my  best  to  get  them  to  stick  to  the 


134  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Gospel,  and  not  allow  worldliness  to  get  into  the  teachings 
of  the  church ;  but  the  good  old  preachers  have  gone  to 
glory. '^  How  external  to  the  individual  the  doctrine  of 
salvation  by  grace  could  become,  we  learn  from  Drew's 
account  of  it ;   and  from  the  old  hymn  :  — 

"From  every  stormy  wind  that  blows, 
From  my  multitude  of  woes, 
There  is  a  calm,  a  sure  retreat, 
'Tis  found  beneath  the  mercy  seat." 

Whatever  religion  may  have  been  in  the  past,  to-day 
a  religion  which  is  not  in  essence  spiritual,  i.e.  ethical, 
can  hardly  be  called  valuable,  whether  or  not  ethical 
values  constitute  the  whole  of  religion.  But  for  an  ethical 
religion  salvation  seems  to  mean  something  to  be  attained 
by  the  individuars  own  effort  and  will.  For  example,  is 
forgiveness  possible  without  true  repentance,  and  does 
not  repentance  mean  the  setting  of  the  individual  will 
steadfastly  in  the  direction  of  the  goal?  It  means  to 
'^ hitch  one's  wagon  to  a  star"  ;  to  make  a  universal  ideal, 
''an  ought,"  the  guide  of  one's  life.  And  this  ethical 
ideal  can  only  be  the  good  will  itself.  As  Kant  said, 
''There  is  nothing  perfectly  good  in  the  world  but  a  good 
will."  But  the  achievement  of  a  good  will  would  seem 
to  have  no  meaning  apart  from  individual  effort,  respon- 
sibility, and  freedom.     So  Henley :  — 

"It  matters  not  how  strait  the  gate. 
How  fraught  with  punishment  the  scroll. 
I  am  the  master  of  my  fate, 
I  am  the  captain  of  my  soul." 

And  so,  likewise,  in  Emily  Bronte's  prayer,  "The  Old 
Stoic":—     • 

"And  if  I  pray  the  only  prayer 
That  moves  my  lips  for  me 
Is  leave  the  heart  that  now  I  bear 
And  give  me  liberty. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  135 

"  Yes,  as  my  swift  days  near  their  goal 
'Tis  all  that  I  implore, 
In  life  and  death  a  chainless  soul 
With  courage  to  endure." 

This  is  the  Stoic  attitude.  Although,  as  we  have  already- 
seen,  the  Stoic  held  that  much  must  be  accepted  from  the 
hands  of  fate,  and  that  to  be  ready  to  renounce  was  the 
part  of  wisdom,  yet  on  the  whole  the  Stoic  was  ''Sapiens 
contra  mundum."  To  be  at  peace  and  content;  to  live 
according  to  reason;  ''to  live  with  the  gods,'^  —  all  this 
was  in  his  own  power.  This  thought  is  carried  to  its 
extremest  limit  in  Swinburne's  poem  of  "Hertha,''^  and 
again  this  ideal  is  expressed  in  Nietzsche's  conception  of 
the  Superman,  the  scorner  of  passive  virtues,  who  hurled 
defiance  at  the  sentimentaUsm  of  the  age. 

1.  "Yes,  I  know  thy  danger,  but  by  my  love  and  hope 
I  conjure  thee  reject  not  thy  law  and  thy  hope. 

The  noble  one  is  always  in  danger  of  becoming  an 
insolent,  a  sneering  one  and  the  destroyer.  Alas,  I  have 
known  noble  ones  who  lost  their  highest  hope,  then  they 
slandered  all  high  hopes. 

By  my  love  and  my  hope,  I  conjure  thee,  do  not  cast 
away  the  hero  in  thy  soul.  I  believe  in  the  hohness  of 
thy  highest  hopes."  ^ 

And  so,  also,  in  Buddhism,  we  find  the  same  stress  laid 
on  individual  initiative  and  effort.  To  make  the  great 
renunciation  by  which  one  overcomes  desire  and  re- 
birth, and  through  which  one  attains  enhghtenment  and 
peace  —  this  is  an  individual  act.  The  Buddha  reveals 
the  Way,  but  the  path  of  emancipation,  "the  Path  which 

1  Swinburne,  "Hertha." 
^*A  creed  is  a  rod, 

And  a  crown  is  of  right ; 
But  this  thing  is  God, 
To  be  man  with  thy  might. 
To  grow  straight  in  the  strength  of  thy  spirit  and  live  out  thy  life  as 
the  light." 

2  Thus  spake  Zarathustra ;  Nietzsche. 


136  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

opens  the  eyes  and  bestows  understanding,  which  leads 
to  peace  of  mind,  to  higher  wisdom,  to.  full  enlight- 
enment,'^  —  this  path  must  be  undertaken  by  the  in- 
dividual for  himself;  '^not  rite  nor  prayer,  not  god  nor 
man"  can  help  him  in  the  end  if  the  will  to  live  is  not 
transformed  into  the  renouncing  will. 

Again,  we  find,  as  we  should  naturally  expect  to  do, 
the  attitude  of  individual  initiative  and  effort  expressed 
in  those  historical  reUgions  which  fall  into  the  class  of 
the  typically  ethical  religions,  —  the  religions  of  the  He- 
brew prophets  and  of  the  Persian  Zoroaster. 

The  early  religious  history  of  the  Hebrews  is  one  long 
struggle  between  the  purer  religious  worship  of  the  no- 
madic tribes  and  the  nature  worship  of  the  Canaanites  whose 
land  they  had  invaded.  The  contrast  is  strikingly  set 
forth  in  Amos  and  the  later  prophets.  The  historically 
earliest  of  these  critical  moments  is  given  in  Kings,  in 
the  dramatic  account  of  the  trial  by  fire  between  Jahwe 
and  the  Baalim  when  the  moral  decision  is  set  before  the 
the  people:  ^^ Choose  ye  this  day  whom  ye  will  serve." 
Again,  in  the  Persian  religion,  we  meet  a  similar  conflict 
between  a  moral  and  a  naturalistic  conception  of  the 
divine;  when  Zoroaster  calls  upon  the  people  to  choose 
between  the  '^ lying  gods"  and  Ahura-Mazda,  upholder 
of  'Hhe  best  order,"  protector  of  the  righteous.  In  the 
formulae  of  confession  already  quoted  the  individual 
renounces  the  powers  of  evil  and  binds  himself  to  the  loyal 
service  of  Ahura  the  holy. 

"I  speak  myself  free  from  the  evil  spirit  and  confess  myself  to  be 
one  of  the  Mazda  —  faithful." 

"The  will  of  the  Lord  is  the  law  of  righteousness,  the  reward  of 
heaven  is  to  be  hoped  for  for  these  works  performed  in  the  world  for 
Mazda.    Ahura  holds  him  right  who  supports  the  poor." 

"Righteousness  is  the  best  possession;  blessed  is  the  man  whose 
righteousness  is  perfect." 

In  order  to  bring  together  the  two  points  of  view  and 
the  conflict  between  them,  I  summarize :  — 


the  way  of  life  —  its  sources"  137 

Summary  of  the  Opposition  between  Grace  and 
Merit.  —  Grace  comes  as  a  free  gift.  According  to  the 
doctrine  of  grace,  the  individual  is  passive.  Grace  is 
mediated  to  him  in  various  ways,  but  chiefly  in  ways 
which  are  social.  Yet  the  experience  itself  is  rather  one 
which  is  immediate,  appreciative,  individuahstic.  In  the 
Christian  religion,  grace  seems  to  be  used  especially  as  the 
favor  of  God  to  sinners,  in  the  sense  of  God's  forgiveness 
and  redeeming  love.  The  sinner  is  saved  from  his  sin 
not  through  works  or  merit  of  his  own.  In  many  unfore- 
seen ways,  his  sin  is  atoned  for  —  and  this  experienced 
grace  is  immediate.  It  is  no  far-off  goal  to  be  won.  The 
day-spring  from  on  high  hath  visited  him.  He  is  re- 
deemed here  and  now.     Eternity  is  in  the  moment. 

Merit,  on  the  other  hand,  is  an  active  experience.  It 
depends  on  a  unique  decision  of  the  will,  on  individual 
effort  and  responsibihty.  Hence  the  emphasis  is  on  the 
individual,  since  nothing  outside  himself  can  determine 
his  will,  that  is,  '^save"  him ;  and  yet  the  manifestations 
of  merit  are  necessarily  social.  Hence  the  social  pro- 
grammes of  the  Hebrew  prophets  and  others  to  which  we 
have  already  referred  in  a  preceding  chapter.  Man  is 
bound  by  the  ideal  he  serves,  and  this  ideal  relates  the 
individual  in  active  service  to  the  community  or  social 
order.  Yet  not  because  he  is  a  member  of  a  race  or  of  a 
social  group  will  the  individual  be  saved  in  the  end ;  not 
because  he  accepts  any  creed  or  performs  any  rite;  but 
because  in  practice  he  reveals  an  enlightened  and  dis- 
cipUned,  a  loving  and  perhaps  an  atoning  will.  The 
victory  is  the  victory  of  spirit  over  matter,  of  the  en- 
lightened and  righteous  will  over  mere  instinct  and  im- 
pulse, of  the  higher  self  over  the  lower.  But  the  task  of 
the  good  will  is  never  fully  accomplished,  the  victory  never 
complete;  the  temptation  returns,  the  struggle  is  con- 
stantly renewed.  Rest  for  the  will  would  be  death,  not 
salvation.     The  will  glories  in  the  strife. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  an  enhghtened  and  spiritual 


138  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

religion,  certainly  an  artificial  and  mechanical  scheme  of 
salvation  can  have  no  meaning  or  value.  There  is,  there- 
fore, no  question  in  this  discussion  of  the  propitiation  of  an 
angry  God,  or  a  God  with  whom  a  bargain  must  be  made ; 
nor  of  a  ransom  of  many  sinners  by  the  sacrificial  blood  of 
one  righteous  person  to  satisfy  a  logical  scheme  of  justice. 
But  when  we  have  said  all  this,  we  have  not  settled  the 
issue  between  ''grace  and  merit,"  for  the  deeper  underlying 
question  remains  of  the  relation  of  the  individual  to  the 
community ;  of  the  part  to  the  whole  in  a  moral  universe ; 
and  especially  the  relation  of  the  sinner  to  the  moral 
order  from  which  he  has  separated  himself. 

This  problem,  i.e.  the  problem  of  the  relation  of  the 
individual  to  the  community  and  to  his  race,  also  reaches 
beyond  the  range  of  the  religious  field.  It  appears  in 
relation  to  the  works  of  the  creative  imagination,  in  re- 
lation to  inventions  and  discoveries  of  science,  as  well  as 
to  the  creations  of  art.  It  may  throw  light  on  the  present 
problem  to  consider  the  relation  of  the  individual  artistic 
genius  to  the  community  Ufe. 

Are  creative  works  produced  by  the  individual  alone 
by  his  own  effort  and  intent?  So  unique  and  original 
they  are  that  they  appear  unaccountable,  spontaneous 
variations,  ''bolts  from  the  blue."  But  the  individual 
genius  himself  —  is  he  a  chance  variation  separate  from 
other  men,  who  cannot  be  accounted  for  by  his  ancestry, 
his  race  and  environment ;  or  is  he  essentially  bound  up 
with  society,  an  outgrowth  and  development  of  the  com- 
munity life  of  his  time?  When  we  consider  the  appear- 
ance of  great  works  of  art  and  of  scientific  discoveries, 
we  find  that  as  a  rule  they  take  place  in  or  immediately 
following  an  age  productive  of  many  lesser  works.  Many 
unknown  craftsmen,  working  silently,  helped  to  build  the 
Gothic  cathedrals.  They  were  an  expression  of  the  in- 
terest and  aspiration  of  the  community  hfe.  The  four 
Gospels  of  the  New  Testament  grew  gradually  out  of 


THE   WAY  OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  139 

the  needs  of  the  little  early  Christian  communities.  '*  The 
litanies  of  nations^'  came  as  a  response  to  the  question- 
ings and  longings  of  man  in  the  Dark  Ages. 

"Like  the  volcano's  tongue  of  flame, 
Up  from  the  burning  core  below, 
These  canticles  of  love  and  woe." 

Many  wandering  romancers  and  bards  had  recounted 
their  stories  and  legends  and  sung  their  songs  in  the  popu- 
lar tongue  before  Homer  and  Dante  wrote  their  great 
epics.  The  forerunners  of  Phidian  sculpture  appear  in 
the  archaic  figures  of  early  Greek  art ;  and  the  "motifs'' 
of  the  Florentine  painters  of  the  Renaissance  in  the  Byz- 
antine rehgious  mosaics  and  paintings  of  the  eleventh 
and  twelfth  centuries.  Great  music,  like  the  music  of 
Beethoven,  has  its  roots  deep  in  the  elemental  expression 
of  the  race  spirit  in  the  folk  songs. 

In  the  field  of  science  many  workers  were  working  for 
the  telephone  and  the  aeroplane  before  the  successful 
inventions  finally  came. 

An  enhghtening  account  of  the  psychology  of  genius, 
and  of  the  cyclic  or  reciprocal  relation  between  the  in- 
dividual genius  and  society  has  been  given  by  Professor 
Mark  Baldwin.^  The  genius  draws  from  the  life  of  so- 
ciety, but  he  transforms  through  his  own  creative  im- 
agination the  material  he  has  received,  and  gives  the 
product  back  to  society  to  be  tested  by  it  as  to  its  truth 
or  worth,  and  in  order  that  it  may  receive  society's  sanction. 
This  sanction,  to  be  sure,  the  work  or  message  of  genius 
may  not  receive  until  many  generations  have  passed 
away.  Ultimate  truth  and  value  are  not  affirmed  or  de- 
nied by  the  verdict  of  any  temporal  society ;  but  if  the 
message  of  the  genius  is  true,  it  will  be  heard  by  society 
in  the  end ;  for  his  message  came  out  of  the  community 
life  —  that  is,  out  of  his  insight  into  its  deepest  and  per- 
manent needs,  dreams,  and  ideals. 

"Himself  from  God  he  could  not  free." 

^Mark  Baldwin,  "Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations,"  Chap.  V. 


140  THE    DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Sanctioned  by  society,  then  comes  the  next  step  —  the 
divine  vision  of  the  prophet  or  creative  genius  reacts  to 
raise  to  higher  levels  the  life  of  the  community  out  of 
which  itself  sprang.     This  is  the  rhythm  of  growth. 

It  is  not  otherwise,  I  take  it,  with  religious  genius. 
Could  we  solve  the  problem  in  one  field  we  could  solve 
it  in  all. 

So  wonderful  is  the  endowment  of  genius  that  from 
earhest  times  men  of  genius,  and  especially  men  of  re- 
ligious genius,  have  been  held  to  be  divinely  inspired.  It 
was  beilieved  that  they  were  ^^ seized  upon  by  the  god" 
and  that  they  received  a  direct  revelation  from  the  un- 
seen world.  Men  of  aesthetic  genius  as  well  as  scientific 
discoverers  themselves  report  inspired  moments  when 
they  are  swayed,  as  it  were,  by  some  power  outside 
themselves,  which  flows  through  them  as  passive  instru- 
ments of  its  will.  In  such  divine  moments  the  solution 
of  a  problem,  or  the  motive  or  form  of  a  poem  or  musical 
composition,  has  flashed  upon  their  minds  from  some 
source  other  than  that  of  their  clear  self-conscious  pur- 
pose and  intent.  So  Goethe  reports  of  the  composition 
of  ^^Werther"  that  he  wrote  this  little  book  *' somewhat 
unconsciously,  like  a  sleep-walker  "  ;    and  Kant  says :  — 

"The  reason  why  eneptomy —  originality  of  talent  —  receives  that 
mystical  title  is  that  the  subject  of  it  cannot  explain  its  eruptions,  or 
that  he  finds  himself  in  possession  of  an  art  which  he  could  not  have 
learned  and  which  he  cannot  comprehend.  For  .  .  .  (the  cause  of 
an  effect)  is  an  attitude  of  the  mind  (a  genius  with  which  a  gifted 
person  is  endowed  from  his  birth),  whose  inspiration,  as  it  were,  he 
only  follows." 

In  ancient  times  it  was  said  that  the  poet  was  breathed 
upon  by  the  Muse,  but  in  our  age  of  scientific  methods 
another  name  has  been  found  for  these  sudden  inspira- 
tions of  genius.  This  new  name  is  the  '*  subliminal 
consciousness."  This  sub-marginal  region  is  a  deeper 
region  of  consciousness  than  that  of  the  individual's  own 
conscious  intent.     It  is  something  more  intuitive,  and  is 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  141 

truer  in  its  verdicts,  it  is  held,  than  the  reasoning  powers 
of  the  mind.  The  subliminal  consciousness  seems  to 
contain  the  stored-up  experiences  and  instinctive  ten- 
dencies of  the  individual's  own  past;  of  the  past  of  his 
ancestors,  and  even  of  his  race ;  that  is,  the  individual  is 
not  expressed  merely  or  wholly  in  his  own  self-conscious 
purpose.  Now  the  products  of  the  subliminal  conscious- 
ness have  a  very  wide  range.  ^  They  vary  from  the  merely 
trivial,  from  wild  impulses  and  passionate  outbursts,  to 
revelations  of  true  insight  and  creations  of  real  value. 
It  follows  that  the  works  of  the  so-called  inspired  imag- 
ination have  to  be  sanctioned  and  tested  as  to  their  truth 
and  worth  by  some  standard  other  than  that  of  the  sub- 
liminal consciousness  itself.  The  divine  message  is  in- 
terpreted by  human  standards  of  value.  Hence  the 
cyclic  or  rhythmic  process  between  the  individual  and 
society  already  described.  The  immediate  vision,  the 
voices  and  ''revelations"  of  religious  consciousness, — 
the  ''gifts  of  grace''  —  I  believe  come  not  otherwise. 
Who  knows  how  much  effort  of  the  ages,  effort  individual 
and  racial,  apparently  silent  and  unsuccessful,  has  gone 
to  make  possible  the  immediate  inspiration  of  genius? 
But  still  we  must  admit  that  the  nature  of  genius,  in  what- 
ever field,  is,  after  all,  more  or  less  of  a  mystery.  It 
remains  itself  an  "unanswered  question."  Yet  it  has, 
possibly,  thrown  back  some  light  on  the  relation  between 
"divine  grace"  and  "individual  merit." 


II 

There  is  another  group  of  oppositions  which  is  closely 
related  to  the  already  discussed  opposition  between 
Grace  and  Merit.     This  group  consists  of:  — 

a.  The  opposition  between  Necessity  and  Freedom ; 

h.  Original  sin  and  individual  responsibility ; 

c.  Established  authority  and  individual  judgment. 

1  This  is  noted  by  William  James  in  his  book  on  religious  experience. 


k 


142  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

1  shall  consider  (a)  and  (6)  together. 

a  and  6.  —  //  ideality  is  in  truth  the  essential  character- 
istic of  religious  experience;  if,  that  is,  man's  life  is  in- 
spired and  guided  by  ideals,  and  if  rehgion  is  ethical,  then 
it  seems  man  must  be  free.  The  essence  of  the  conscious 
will,  as  Kant  taught,  is  autonomy.  It  acts  from  reverence 
for  a  self-imposed  law.     You  can  because  you  ought. ^ 

On  the  other  hand,  if  man  is  saved  by  grace,  and  if  grace, 
when  it  comes,  is  irresistible,  then  he  is  saved  by  a  free 
gift  of  God  as  by  a  decree  of  fate,  and  he  is  not  free. 

"For  whom  he  foreknew,  he  also  foreordained  to  be  conformed  to 
the  image  of  his  Son ;  .  .  .  and  whom  he  foreordained,  them,  also,  he 
called;  and  whom  he  called,  them  he  also  justified;  and  whom  he 
justified,  them  he  also  glorified." 

(Romans  8 :  29,  30.) 

Salvation  through  Grace  appears  to  be  entirely  un- 
related to  man's  merit  and  responsibility.  As  a  modern 
illustration,  note  Daniel  Drew's  experience  of  Grace:  — 

"The  soul  that  knows  its  sins  forgiven  by  the  atoning  blood  ap- 
plied, and  that  has  had  vouchsafed  unto  it  the  sprinkled  conscience 
and  the  inward  witness." 

The  question  arises  then  —  what  of  sin  ?  Is  man  free 
to  be  a  sinner? 

Perhaps  if  we  imderstood  the  nature  and  significance 
of  sin  2  we  should  see  more  clearly  into  all  these  problems. 
'*Who  answers  one  of  my  questions,"  saith  the  Sphinx, 
"is  master  of  all  I  am."     If  man  is  free  to  win  salvation 

*  The  standpoint  of  the  civil  law  is  somewhat  differentiated  from 
this  point  of  view,  for  the  concern  of  the  law  is  not  the  individual 
citizen,  but  the  protection  of  the  community  and  its  welfare.  The 
standard  of  the  law,  therefore,  is  an  external  standard  as  far  as  the 
individual  is  concerned,  i.e.  its  standard  is  the  average  man  and  what 
may  reasonably  be  expected  of  him.  The  law  holds  a  man  guilty 
and  punishable  in  case  his  act  proceeded  from  his  own  intent  and 
deliberate  purpose ;  but  ignorance  of  the  law  excuses  no  man,  because 
it  is  assumed  that  a  sane  being  could  have  known  the  law.  The  in- 
dividual, therefore,  is  judged  by  the  Average  Man.  (See  ."The  Com- 
mon Law,"  by  Justice  Holmes.) 

2  See  Note  1,  Chapter  II. 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE ITS    SOURCES  143 

in  the  sense  of  moral  redemption,  i.e.  through  the  achieve- 
ment of  a  holy  will,  then,  must  he  not  be  equally  free  to 
turn  aside  from  'Hhe  way,"  to  be  a  backslider   and  a 
sinner  ? 
This  is  the  meaning  and  destiny  of  man  according  to 

Dante :  — 

"Considerate  la  vostra  semenza 

Fatti  non  foste  a  viver  come  bruti, 

Ma  per  seguir  virtude  e  conoscenza." 

Yet  in  our  day,  with  its  emphasis  on  biological  science 
and  the  theory  of  evolution,  and  with  its  passion  for  the 
scientific  investigation  of  man^s  environment  in  the  search 
for  the  causes  of  his  actions,  we  incline  to  a  very  different 
point  of  view,  for  we  have  seen  how  important  a  part  the 
social  and  economic  factors  of  man's  "milieu' '  play  in  deter- 
mining his  life's  possibilities.  We  feel  often  very  strongly 
that  the  criminal  classes  are  not  responsible  for  their  deeds ; 
environment  and  inheritance  have  made  them  what  they 
are.  So  it  has  been  claimed  that  poverty  is  the  cause  of 
sin,  and  in  a  recent  book  on  religion  I  find  the  following 
inscription :  — 

"Sin  is  Misery;  Misery  is  Poverty;  the  Antidote  of  Poverty  is 
Income." 

But  this  is  to  identify  sin  with  external  conditions,  and 
appears  to  contradict  the  notion  of  freedom  and  of  ethical 
values.  For,  after  all,  if  this  doctrine  appUes  to  the  ex- 
treme cases,  can  it  not  be  applied  all  along  the  line? 
When  the  well-born,  and  well-nurtured,  and  ordinarily 
upright  man  yields  to  sudden  or  strong  temptation,  he, 
too,  may  claim  that  his  passion  or  his  weakness  was  due 
to  the  overwhelming  force  of  circumstances  or  to  inherited 
tendencies  which  may  even  be  racial,  and  perhaps  very 
remote. 

A  modern  literary  instance  of  the  opposition  and  con- 
flict between  individual  responsibility  and  '^original  sin" 
is  to  be  found  in  John  Galsworthy's  play  of  "Justice." 
In  this  play  a  young  man,  well-intentioned  but  weak,  and 


144  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

with  inherited  tendencies  to  disease,  under  dire  stress  of 
circumstances,  yields  to  temptation  and  forges  his  em- 
ployer's name  on  a  check.  The  question  for  the  law  is 
—  how  far  he  was  responsible,  guilty,  and  punishable, 
and  how  far  he  was  the  prey  of  social  causes,  represented 
by  inheritance  and  circumstance.  It  is  a  case,  common 
enough  probably  in  actual  hfe,  where  it  seems  almost  im- 
possible to  do  complete  justice  at  once  to  society  and  to  the 
individual. 

In  order  to  keep  a  universe  of  moral  values,  it  seems 
necessary  to  admit  freedom  to  sin.  Yet  how  different 
appears  to  be  the  view  of  sin  of  Paul  and  Augustine ! 

Since  these  two  forms  of  opposition,  viz.  the  opposition 
between  freedom  and  necessity  and  the  opposition  between 
individual  moral  responsibility  and  original  sin  are  so 
closely  related,  and  since  the  same  problem  is  involved 
in  both  of  them,  I  shall  consider  them  together.  In  so 
doing  it  may  be  also  that  hght  will  be  thrown  back  upon 
the  foregoing  problem  involved  in  the  opposition  between 
grace  and  merit. 

In  various  ways,  then,  man  seems  not  to  be  free,  but 
his  chiefest  fetters  do  not  come  from  the  physical  world. 

The  doctrine  of  necessity  holds  ^Hhat  the  state  of  things 
existing  at  any  time  and  certain  laws  being  given,  the 
state  of  things  at  any  other  time  is  completely  deter- 
mined." Man's  motives  are  products  of  nature  and  can 
be  determined  like  any  other  natural  thing. 

But  against  this  theory  two  objections  may  be  raised. 
First,  the  mechanical  sequence  of  cause  and  effect  appears, 
after  all,  to  be  only  our  ^'construct"  for  getting  some  sort 
of  unity  and  identity,  i,e,  some  understanding  into  the 
flux  of  sensational  experience,  and  so  ultimately  some 
practical  control  of  it.  How,  then,  should  man  feel  him- 
self bound  by  this,  his  own  human  construction  ?  He  is 
bound  by  it  when  making  scientific  experiments,  —  but, 
as  Professor  Miinsterberg  is  constantly  reminding  us, 
this  scientific  construction  does  not  affect  his  real  life. 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  145 

And  further,  in  the  second  place,  this  necessitarian 
hypothesis  is  not  the  only  one,  nor  necessarily  the  best 
that  he  can  make.  Some  order  and  invariability  there 
must  be ;  but  as  Professor  Pierce  points  out  ^  the  con- 
clusions of  science  are  only  approximately  true,  or  in  the 
long  run  and  statistically;  and  science  seems  never  to 
have  been  able  to  explain  spontaneous  variations. 

But  the  nature-world  is  not  merely  a  scientific  construc- 
tion. Man  lives  in  an  environment,  and  this  non-hmnan 
environment  affects  him  surely.  It  appears  to  do  so  in 
two  ways.  First,  as  chance  and  accident,  and  secondly, 
as  suggestion. 

(1)  The  External  Limiting  World  as  Chance  and 
Accident.  —  He  may  not  escape  earthquake,  floods,  and 
tempests.  In  the  carrying  on  of  his  everyday  vocation 
these  primeval  forces  of  nature  may  overwhelm  him.  If 
a  fisherman,  he  may  be  overtaken  by  a  storm  and  his  boat 
shipwrecked.  If  a  miner,  in  spite  of  all  human  precautions, 
he  may  be  buried  in  the  mine.  If  a  physician,  he  must 
constantly  expose  himself  to  infection.  His  body  is 
subject  to  old  age,  disease,  and  finally  death.  These  are 
the  things  which  the  Buddha  saw  in  sorrow,  and  from 
which  he  found  also  a  way  of  escape.  Evils  in  themselves, 
they  are,  but  they  do  not  necessarily  interfere  with  man's 
true  freedom. 

Man  learns  to  re-define  his  world  and  his  '^summum 
bonum.'^  Physical  infirmities  do  not  cut  off  the  greatest 
joys.  Death,  to  be  sure,  ends  all  in  this  world,  and  fife  is 
too  short  for  all  man  wishes  to  accomphsh.  Yet  to  die 
a  few  years  sooner  or  later,  does  this  really  make  so  very 
much  difference  ?  To  live  forever  here  is  not  perhaps  after 
all  so  great  a  good,  nor  the  fact  of  death  so  great  an  evil. 

(2)  The  External  World  as  Suggestion.  —  The 
second  form  in  which  the  natural  environment  seems  to 
hmit  man  is  in  the  form  of  suggestion.  The  country  boy  or 
girl  leads  an  innocent  life  till  he  or  she  comes  to  the  great 

1  Professor  Charles  Pierce  in  "The  Monist." 
ii 


146  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

city  with  its  manifold  temptations  to  pleasm-e,  excitement, 
and  ambition.  The  moving  picture  shows,  e.g.,  lure  the 
boy,  who  afterwards  imitates  the  sentimentahty  or  crime 
he  beholds  on  the  stage  of  that  dream  world.  Even  the 
saint  has  his  own  temptations  from  the  call  of  the  en- 
vironment. The  devil  says :  ^^  Throw  thyself  down  from 
the  temple  walls  —  show  some  sign  and  wonder,  and  then 
all  thy  world  will  believe  in  thee." 

The  suggestions  from  the  environment  may  be  also,  of 
course,  an  incentive  to  good.  The  question  whether  they 
are  irresistible  influences  is  just  the  question  whether  man 
is  free,  or  whether  all  his  acts  are  strictly  determined 
and  under  natural  law,  as  the  necessitarian  holds. 

The  illustrations  lead  over  to  our  main  topic.  These 
suggestions  may  be  primarily  chance  influences,  but  as  a 
rule  and  fundamentally,  they  express  some  form  of  social 
consciousness ;  and  it  is  here  that  the  essential  limitation 
to  man^s  freedom  seems  to  lie. 

Limitation  Through  the  Social  Milieu.  —  Here, 
again,  we  meet  with  two  principal  types.  The  individ- 
uaFs  will  seems  to  swing  between  two  poles  of  social 
causation. 

On  the  one  hand,  we  have  the  suggestible  conscious- 
ness, the  self  of  habit,  of  untrained  emotion,  and  of  race 
inheritance,  —  the  '^ natural  man"  of  St.  Paul. 

At  the  opposite  pole  we  have  the  individual  will  which, 
in  renouncing  its  own  will,  has  become  identified  with  the 
universal,  social  will  of  God.  But  this  will  of  the  universe, 
if  a  good  will,  has  always  willed  the  good,  is  necessary  and 
unchanging.  If  man's  will  is  identified  with  the  absolute 
will,  how  far  can  man  be  free?  His  individuality  seems 
to  make  no  difference  to  the  whole. 

The  problem  of  the  limitation  of  man's  freedom  through 
these  two  forms  of  social  causation  has  been  set  forth  by 
Paul  and  Augustine  and  is  exemplified  in  their  experience. 

The  experience  of  the  two  men  seems  to  have  had  much  in 
common,  and  these  common  elements  are  further  enhanced 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  147 

in  their  doctrinal  expression  of  their  experience  by  the 
fact  that  Augustine  studied  deeply  the  epistles  of  Paul 
and  makes  use  of  the  latter's  categories. 

The  Doctrine  of  St.  Augustine  Concerning  Sin 
AND  Grace.  —  Long  before  his  conversion,  the  tempes- 
tuous youth  of  Augustine  was  already  seeking  after  an 
ideal  good.  Hence  his  own  passionate  sense  of  sin  and 
failure.  From  this  sin  which  had  such  deep  hold  upon 
him,  he  seemed  unable  to  escape  by  the  force  of  his  own 
will.  The  sin  was  his  own,  for  it  was  the  result  of  habit 
long  indulged  in,  and  habit  not  resisted  had  become  ne- 
cessity. And  yet  all  the  time  he  disapproved  his  sin,  and 
was  longing  for  God,  the  true  good.  Hence  the  evil 
in  him  seemed  not  himself,  but  rather  some  natural  evil 
of  habit  or  inheritance,  the  '^original  sin"  from  Adam. 
In  his  own  words  :  — 

"It  was  myself,  indeed,  in  either  will;  yet  more  myself  in  that 
which  I  approved  in  myself  than  in  that  which  I  disapproved.  For 
in  this  latter  it  was  more  not  myself,  for  in  great  part  I  rather  suffered 
it  against  my  will  than  acted  wilhngly.  But  yet  it  was  through  me 
that  habit  had  obtained  such  a  fierce  ascendency  over  me,  because  I 
had  willingly  come  whither  I  willed  not.  Yet  all  the  time  I  was  long- 
ing for  Thee,  but  I  was  bound,  not  by  the  chains  of  another  but  by  my 
own  iron  will.  .  .  .  For  the  law  of  sin  is  the  force  of  habit,  whereby 
the  mind  is  drawn  and  held  even  unwillingly,  but  deservedly  in  that 
it  willingly  fell  into  it." 

—  "St.  Augustine's  Confessions." 

The  new  will  which  he  began  to  have  was  not  strong 
enough  to  overcome  that  other  will  strengthened  by  age. 

''So  these  two  wills  —  the  one  old,  the  other  new;  the  one  carnal, 
the  other  spiritual  —  contended  together  and  by  their  discord  dis- 
turbed my  soul." 

All  his  struggles  seemed  hopeless  until  the  grace  of 
God  came.  '  ^  Who,  then,  should  deliver  me,  wretched  man, 
from  the  body  of  this  death,  but  Thy  Grace?''  When 
this  grace  comes  it  is  irresistible. 

Augustine  meditated  on  his  own  experience  to  find  truth. 


148  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

"Roam  not  away  beyond  thyself;  turn  into  thyself;  in  the  inner 
man  dwells  the  truth ;  seek  it  in  the  stillness  and  leisure  of  thy  spirit. 
To  love  God  is  to  know  God,  the  purer  the  heart  is  from  all  defilement, 
so  much  the  more  is  it  capable  of  beholding  the  truth." 

In  this  inner  experience,  Augustine  found  the  paradox  of 
the  will  and  sin,  and  over  against  this  the  paradox  of 
grace.  ^  The  impulses  of  the  will  are  impulses  to  get 
pleasure  and  avoid  pain.  Formally  the  will  is  free ;  ac- 
tually it  is  bound  by  these  inclinations,  its  motives.  Yet 
it  knows  the  good ;  hence  the  will  has  in  a  way  the  power 
of  choosing  the  good.  Under  the  influence  of  Manichean 
dualism,  Augustine  interprets  the  sin  of  the  will  as  evil 
substance  or  original  sin  inherited  from  Adam;  hence 
infants  who  had  never  sinned  through  their  own  wills 
are  yet  sinful.  Yet  all  has  been  created  by  God  and  God 
being  good  can  create  only  the  good.  Augustine  seeks 
to  interpret  this  evil  substance  by  the  light  which  he  had 
gotten  from  Neo-Platonic  doctrine.  The  evil  substance 
becomes  an  evil  principle  —  a  mere  negative. 

God's  order  is  good  and  there  is  nothing  outside  it  to 
corrupt  it.  Yet  there  is  the  will  to  evil  and  the  original 
sinful  nature  of  man.  Augustine's  ^  conclusion  is  that 
man  was  created  ex  nihilo.  The  nothing  which,  in  Neo- 
Platonic  doctrine,  constituted  the  ground  of  sin  was  man's 
finitude  and,  in  Buddhism,  the  transitoriness  and  mu- 
tability of  life  is  really  in  Augustine  a  kind  of  survival  of 
the  evil  substance  of  Manicheism. 

Man  cannot  free  himself  from  this  inrooted  evil  through 
his  own  will  and  merit.  He  knows  the  good  and  '^partly 
wills,  and  partly  does  not  will"  to  follow  it.  Divine  Grace 
sets  him  free  to  follow  the  true  law  of  the  will ;  but  this 
grace  is  a  gift  and  chooses  whom  it  will.  Hence  we  find 
the  contradictions  of  predestinating  grace  and  election  over 
against  the  responsibility  and  merit  of  the  choosing  will. 

The  Doctrine  of  St.  Paul  in  Romans  7.  —  Like 
to  the  personal  experience  of  sin  and  grace  of  Saint  Au- 

1  See  Harnack,  "History  of  Dogma."  ^  Ihid, 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  149 

gustine,  is  the  personal  experience  of  Saint  Paul.  Long 
had  Paul  struggled  under  the  Jewish  law  to  attain  per- 
fection, through  works  and  formal  requirements  of  him- 
self to  attain  merit.  But  Paul  had  found  this  to  be  an 
impossibility.  As  with  Augustine,  two  wills  struggled 
in  him  for  mastery,  the  will  of  the  flesh  was  his  own,  yet 
not  his  own.  For  he  desired  the  good  and  delighted  in 
it ;  ^'yet  not  what  I  would  ^'  he  says,  *^do  I  practice ;  but 
what  I  hate,  that  I  do.  .  .  .  So  now  it  is  no  more  I  that 
do  it,  but  sin  that  dwelleth  in  me,"  i.e,  a  kind  of  inherited 
original  sin. 

Then  in  a  revelation,  ''whether  in  the  body  or  out  of  the 
body,"  Paul  says,  ''I  know  not,"  there  appeared  to  him 
the  power  of  the  risen  Christ,  his  cross  and  righteousness. 
This  vision  so  overwhelmed  Paul,  and  thereafter  took  such 
complete  possession  of  him,  that  it  seems  to  have  driven  out 
all  other  thoughts  and  to  have  quite  transformed  his  life. 
''To  me,"  he  says,  "to  live  is  Christ ;  and  all  things  that 
before  were  gain  to  me,  these  have  I  counted  loss  for 
Christ."     (Phil.  3.) 

But  this  new  love  of  Christ  and  of  the  Christlike  life 
which  —  coming  to  him  so  suddenly  and  mysteriously  — 
so  overpowered  Paul,  could  not  be  of  his  own  will  and 
merit,  which  had  before  so  vainly  struggled  after  right- 
eousness.    It  must,  then,  be  the  gift  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 

"Not  having  a  righteousness  of  mine  own,  even  that  which  is  of  the 
law,  but  that  which  is  through  faith  in  Christ,  the  righteousness  which 
is  from  God  by  faith,  that  I  may  know  Him  and  the  power  of  His 
resurrection,  and  the  fellowship  of  His  sufferings."  ^ 

Salvation  is  no  more  in  struggling  after  an  impossible 
standard,  but  in  self-surrender  to  the  Christ  ideal;  to 
the  God  who  loves  and  forgives  the  sinner,  and  who  be- 
lieves in  his  ultimate  perfectibility.  It  is  not  what  man 
does  for  himself,  but  what  God  does  for  him  which  is  the 
principle  of  PauFs  new  religion.    His  conception  of  God 

1  Phil.  3  :  9, 10. 


I 


150  THE   DRAMA   OP  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

is  no  longer  the  legalistic  conception  of  Israel,  but  the 
conception  of  Jesus  of  the  loving  father,  the  father  of  the 
Parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son,  of  the  good  Shepherd  who 
seeks  for  the  lost  Sheep.  '*By  the  grace  of  God,''  says 
Paul,  "I  am  what  I  am  —  and  His  grace  which  was  be- 
stowed upon  me  was  not  foimd  vain ;  but  I  labored  more 
abundantly  than  they  all ;  yet  not  I,  but  the  grace  of  God 
which  was  with  me." 

Paul's  Doctrine  of  Sin  and  Grace. — Paul's  doctrine, 
though  expressed  in  the  categories  of  Jewish  legalism  and 
of  the  Alexandrian  philosophy,  is  based  on  his  own  personal 
experience  of  redemption  and  transformation.  Without 
going  into  these  historical  conceptions  which  students  of 
theology  have  deeply  studied,  let  us  try  to  express  what 
Paul's  experience  seems  really  to  have  meant  to  him. 

First,  Paul  traces  sin  back  to  Adam's  disobedience.  Yet 
at  the  same  time  he  holds  man  had  not  known  sin  except 
for  the  law,  i.e.  the  natural  life  is  not  sinful  till  an  ideal 
comes.  ^'I  was  aUve  once  apart  from  the  law,  but  when 
the  commandment  came,  sin  revived  in  me  and  I  died." 
Sin,  then,  is  man's  own  deed;  it  is  disobedience  to  an 
ideal  of  society  and  in  a  measure  his  own  ideal  embodied 
in  an  external  command  or  ^' ought." 

By  means  of  the  law,  as  Paul  had  found,  it  was  impos- 
sible to  attain  perfection.  His  striving  and  meritorious 
works  are  of  no  avail  to  win  salvation.  Man's  life,  then, 
must  be  transformed  through  self -forgetting  surrender  to 
the  grace  of  God,  i.e.  surrender  to  a  Christlike  personality 
creates  righteousness  in  man.  We  imitate  what  we  love, 
and  this  love  to  Christ  is  a  life-giving  power.  Thus  we 
attain  the  Christ  point  of  view  and  so  are  ^'justified." 

Paul's  Doctrine  of  Justification  by  Faith.  — 
Faith  is  not  used  by  Paul  in  the  sense  of  an  intellectual 
conception  of  the  saving  power  of  Christ's  death  and 
resurrection ;  but  as  an  act  of  self-surrender  of  the  total 
individual  personality  to  the  personality  of  Christ,  and 
the  acceptance  of  his  suffering  and  cross.     This  ^Ho  be 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  151 

laid  hold  of '^  by  the  spirit  of  Christ  meant  for  Paul,  "  a 
moral  enthusiast  as  well  as  a  mystic/'  to  become  for  his 
part  an  imitator  of  this  life  and  spirit.  ^'The  love  of 
Christ,"  Paul  says,  '^constraineth  me.''  This  new  life 
of  grace  means  a  real  transformation  of  the  will,  a  trans- 
formation into  ^'the  glorious  liberty  of  a  child  of  God." 
'^Yet  it  is  no  more  I,  but  Christ  who  dwelleth  in  me," 
writes  Paul. 

In  Paul's  doctrine  of  sin  and  of  grace  we  find  that  ten- 
dency to  contradictory  views  which  we  found  in  Augustine, 
i.e.  it  is  difficult  to  make  out  whether  or  not  sin  is  man's 
own  deed,  and  also  whether  grace  which  finally  redeems 
him  from  this  sin  is  wholly  ^'a  free  gift."  Because  of 
this  complication,  it  is  hard  to  say  how  far  Paul  believed 
in  man's  free  will. 

Augustine^  seems  at  first  to  have  believed  in  free- 
dom and  later  to  have  become  a  determinist.  His  diffi- 
culty was  in  the  divided  will.^  Evil  is  in  the  perversity 
of  the  will  turned  away  from  the  supreme  good  which  yet 
it  longs  for.  This  supreme  good  for  Augustine  is  not  an 
intellectual  satisfaction,  nor  yet  the  ecstasy  of  mysticism, 
but  that  which  ought  to  he  the  motive  of  the  willy  freeing  it 
from  ''misera  necessitas  peccandi."  Nothing  is  good  but 
God,  the  good  will.  In  yielding  himself  to  this  good,  man's 
will  becomes  really  free.  ^'The  soul  is  restless  till  it 
finds  rest  in  God."  Now  this  '^ yielding,"  is  it  an  act  of 
freedom  or  the  influence  of  an  irresistible  grace? 

In  Paul's  epistle  to  the  Romans,  Chapters  8  to  12, 
wherein  we  get  his  doctrine  of  foreordination  and 
election,  Paul  seems  to  be  a  determinist. 

"He  hath  mercy  on  whom  he  will,  and  whom  he  will  he  hardeneth 
—  Thou  wilt  say  then  unto  me,  Why  doth  he  still  find  fault?    For 

1  Harnack,  op.  cit. 

2  'For  not  only  to  go,  but  also  to  arrive  thither,  nothing  more  was 
required  than  to  will  to  go,  but  to  wiU  firmly  and  undividedly;  not 
to  turn,  tossed  this  way  and  that,  a  will  haK-wounded,  strugghng, 
rising  in  one  part  with  another  part  falling." 

— ' '  Augustine's  Confessions." 


k 


152  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

who  withstandeth  his  will?  Nay  but,  O  man,  who  art  thou  that 
repliest  against  God  ?  Shall  the  thing  formed  say  to  him  that  formed 
it,  Why  didst  thou  make  me  thus  ?  Or  hath  not  the  potter  a  right  over 
the  clay,  from  the  same  lump  to  make  one  part  a  vessel  unto  honour 
and  another  unto  dishonour?" 

(We  have  to  remember  that  Paul  had  in  mind  here  the 
special  application  to  the  Jews  and  Gentiles.)  '^Eternal 
life,"  is  the  "free  gift"  of  God.  On  the  other  hand,  in 
his  exhortations  to  his  converts  to  adopt  the  Christ- 
life  and  to  put  on  the  fruits  of  the  spirit,  we  are  led 
to  believe  he  must  have  believed  in  some  power  of  self- 
determination,  as  also  from  his  own  zeal  for  personal 
righteousness,  and  the  account  he  gives  of  his  life  in 
Philippians  (3) :    ''I  press  toward  the  mark,"  etc. 

Paul  was  constantly  confronted  with  the  objection  that 
freedom  from  the  law  and  reliance  on  the  gift  of  grace 
would  lead  to  a  lack  of  striving  and  abolish  morality. 
But  how  can  this  be,  Paul  asks,  since  acceptance  of  the  gift 
of  grace  means  (1)  having  died  to  sin,  and  (2)  newness  of 
life,  —  i.e.  birth  into  the  self-sacrificing  love  of  the  Christ- 
like life.    Wherefore  Paul  says :  — 

"Stand  fast  in  the  liberty  wherewith  Christ  hath  made  you  free." 

Yet,  again  and  again  he  emphasizes  the  fact  that  it 
was  a  strength  not  his  own  which  made  this  new  life  pos- 
sible to  him. 

"My  Grace  is  sufficient  unto  thee :  for  my  power  is  made  perfect 
iQ  weakness." 

"I  can  do  all  things  through  Christ  who  strengtheneth  me." 

The  prayer  of  J.  H.  Newman  well  illustrates  the  attitude 
of  salvation  through  grace :  — 

"O  Lord,  I  give  myself  to  Thee,  I  trust  Thee  wholly.  Thou  art 
wiser  than  I  —  more  living  to  me  than  I  myself.  Deign  to  fulfil  Thy 
high  purposes  in  me  whatever  they  be  —  work  in  and  through  me.  I 
am  bom  to  serve  Thee,  to  be  Thine,  to  be  Thy  instrument.  Let  me 
be  Thy  blind  instrument.  I  ask  not  to  see.  I  ask  not  to  know.  I 
ask  simply  to  be  used." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  153 

It  appears  that  the  conception  of  freedom  of  Paul  and 
Augustine  must  have  been  a  decidedly  limited  freedom. 
How  far,  then,  let  us  ask,  can  we  find  in  their  theology 
a  place  for  moral  significance  and  value,  and  have  their 
conceptions  of  election,  grace,  and  atonement  any  meaning 
to-day? 

A  Closer  Consideration  of  the  Opposing  Views.  — 
In  Kant's  view,  moral  responsibility  goes  hand  in  hand 
with  freedom.  Hence  if  we  take  away  freedom,  we  seem 
to  destroy  the  moral  life.  If  man  cannot  help  himself,  how 
can  he  be  responsible  for  his  guilt  ?  On  the  other  hand,  if 
he  is  saved  only  through  an  irresistible  grace  and  the  elec- 
tion of  God,  what  merit  has  he  ?  His  salvation  has  no  re- 
lation to  himself  —  and  what  justice  can  there  be  in  God? 

A  very  different  conception  of  freedom,  —  if  any  free- 
dom remains  at  all,  —  must  have  been  the  conception  of 
Paul  and  Augustine  from  that  of  James  Martineau,  for 
example. 

To  Martineau,  will  is  the  real  cause.  This  will-cau- 
sality, known  to  us  immediately,  would  not  be  recognized 
except  for  the  resistance  of  the  external  world.  From  this 
cause  in  ourselves,  we  carry  abroad  the  conception  of 
causality.  Will-causality  is  the  only  causaHty  we  know. 
The  essence  of  will  is  its  aim  and  power  of  choice.  It 
stands  between  equal  possibilities,  but  through  its  own 
initiative  it  is  able  to  pursue  one  motive  and  reject  all 
others.  We  have  an  inmiediate  consciousness  of  this 
freedom  of  choice  of  the  will. 

Wordsworth  writes  of  those 

"Glad  hearts  without  reproach  or  blot, 
Who  do  God's  work  and  know  it  not." 

And  Harnack  says  of  Pelagius  and  Caelestius  who  took 
part  against  Augustine  in  the  so-called  Pelagian  con- 
troversy :  — 

"They  must  have  belonged  to  those  lucky  people  who,  cold  by 
nature  and  temperate  by  training,  never  notice  any  appreciable  differ- 
ence between  what  they  ought  to  do  and  what  they  actually  do." 


154  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Martineau  is  not  like  either  of  these  types.  He  seems 
to  have  been  highly  self-conscious,  moral,  and  religious, 
yet  his  must  have  been  a  decidedly  united  personahty, 
with  a  clear  sense  of  his  own  purpose,  and  so  of  self-deter- 
mination. 

But  no  intuitionalism  makes  freedom  certain.  The 
feeling  only  reports  itself,  and  against  Martineau's  im- 
mediate certainty  we  have  the  very  different  feelings  re- 
ported by  Paul  and  Augustine. 

It  is  evident  that  in  many  ways  man  is  not  free.  It 
might  happen  that  in  the  course  of  its  revolutions  our 
earth  should  cross  some  fiery  comet's  path,  and  that  such 
a  comet  should  envelop  the  earth  in  its  poisonous  gases. 
In  such  an  happening  man's  will  would  be  absolutely  im- 
potent to  prevent  the  catastrophe  which  would  follow. 

But  no  one  is  interested  in  freedom  from  this  point  of 
view.  The  point  of  interest  here  is  why  there  should 
be  so  much  evil  and  chance,  in  relation  to  men's  purposes 
in  the  universe.  But  the  freedom  we  care  about  is  free- 
dom of  choice  and  self-determination.  Now  how  far  in 
these  ways  is  freedom  possible  ? 

The  will  is  guided  by  motives ;  and  these  motives, 
are  they  not  absolutely  determined?  Is  not  a  man  to  a 
great  extent  what  he  is  because  of  his  inheritance  and  his 
social  training  and  environment,  and  can  he  really  help 
these?  Can  a  man  free  himself  from  these  forms  of  social 
causation  of  the  emotional  subhminal  self,  of  the  self  of 
natural  inheritance,  of  habit,  of  social  influence? 

A  man  may  see  visions  and  dream  dreams,  but  if  he  has 
not  the  natural  gift  for  the  technique  of  color  and  form, 
or  if  he  has  not  the  power  of  expression  in  words  and 
rhythm,  no  amount  of  training  will  ever  make  him  a  great 
artist  or  poet. 

In  a  word,  there  is  the  "unearned  increment"  of  all 
natural  gifts  to  which  George  EHot  calls  attention  in 
speaking  of  the  depth  of  feeling  expressed  in  the  face  of 
that    vain,    pleasure-loving    little    soul,    Hetty    Sorrel. 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  156 

''There  are  faces  which  nature  charges  with  a  meaning 
and  pathos  not  belonging  to  the  single  human  soul  which 
flutters  beneath  them,  but  speaking  the  joys  and  sorrows 
of  foregone  generations/'  And  if  there  is  the  unearned 
increment  of  natural  gifts,  there  is  also  the  unearned  in- 
crement of  the  opposite,  —  of  suffering,  of  hindrances, 
and  defects,  PauFs  ''enemies  of  Satan.'' 

We  forge  our  own  past  perhaps  to  some  extent,  but 
once  chosen,  we  are  bound,  as  Augustine  pointed  out,  by 
the  iron  chains  of  habit  and  necessity.  And  were  we 
really  free,  when  in  some  far  away  past  of  our  childhood 
or  youth  we  chose  in  ignorance  of  all  the  consequences 
involved?  or  can  it  be  said  that  we  really  chose  at  all? 
Did  we  not  slip  more  or  less  unconsciously  into  the  path 
of  least  resistance?  or,  swept  away  by  some  inherited 
passion,  yield  to  temptation? 

But  if  our  actions  are  conditioned  by  motives  as  causes, 
which,  when  once  set  in  motion,  operate  with  as  much 
necessity  as  any  form  of  causaUty  and  lead  to  actions 
which  pass  over  into  habits  —  still,  have  we  not  the  power 
to  break  with  habits  ?  —  is  there  not  somewhere  an  in- 
calculable element  which  renders  our  actions  unpredict- 
able, and  frees  them  from  the  law  of  necessity? 

If  we  mean  by  free-will  the  liherum  arhitrium  indif- 
fer entice,  ix,  "that  a  given  human  being  in  a  given  situa- 
tion can  act  in  two  different  ways"  —  this,  as  Schopen- 
hauer said,  is  an  utter  absurdity.  A  will  without  a  pur- 
pose which  holds  through  a  series  of  acts  is  not  free.  Its 
sole  motive  is  caprice,  and  this  at  last  seems  no  different 
from  chance.  Certainly  our  acts  are  bound  up  with  our 
character,  —  this  character  we  have  partly  made  and 
partly  inherited.  If,  then,  the  same  environment  or 
stimulus  is  given,  will  not  our  acts  be  completely  pre- 
dictable and  subject  to  the  law  of  causality? 

^  There  are  two  factors  involved  in  this  situation ;  (1)  the 
circumstances  or  conditions,  and  (2)  the  character.     But 

*  See  Schopenhauer's  essay  on  "Freedom  of  the  Will." 


156  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

as  a  matter  of  fact  the  elements  are  never  exactly  repeated, 
so  that  we  never  have  exactly  the  same  situation  given 
again,  and  therefore  the  experiment  can  never  be  tried 
over  again  exactly.  But  (3)  even  if  we  allow  the  stimulus 
to  be  exactly  the  same,  the  character,  acted  on  by  pre- 
vious stimuli  and  reacting  upon  them,  has  undergone 
change ;  and  further,  the  relatively  fixed  character  is  not 
the  whole  man.  As  suggested  by  the  transformations 
and  conversions  of  religious  experience,  there  appears  to 
be  in  man  something  more  than  his  clearly  conscious  self 

—  another,  a  '^ subliminal  self,"  or  '^ buried  life"  —  which 
in  unaccountable  ways  makes  ^^uprushes"  into  the  every- 
day self,  and  influences  its  action. 

It  seems,  then,  that  we  have  some  power  to  break 
through  the  chains  of  the  habitual  self.  But^  again,  is 
this  power  of  '^  the  subliminal "  our  own? 

Man  is  truly  free  only  when  he  acts  from  principle  — 
when  he  makes  the  motive  of  his  will  the  good  will  itself 

—  when  he  takes  as  his  life's  guiding  star  a  universal 
ideal  —  an  *' ought."  Knowing  the  principle  of  a  man's 
life,  his  acts  can,  to  be  sure,  be  in  a  measure  predicted, 
because  freedom  does  not  mean  freedom  to  choose  any- 
thing we  please  —  but,  on  the  other  hand,  his  acts  cannot 
be  put  in  a  ''class,"  and  made  material  for  statistics. 
They  are  unique  acts,  valuable  because  determined  by, 
or  proceeding  from,  the  purpose  of  the  individual  in  ques- 
tion. ''This  I  (the  individual)  intend."  It  is  my  in- 
dividual selection  and  choice.  It  shall  be  individual. 
Freedom,  then,  is  not  a  natural  gift.  It  is  something  to 
be  attained.  But  how  is  it  attained  ?  Man  can  because 
he  ought  —  yet,  once  again,  how  far  can  he  ? 

When  we  consider  the  conversion  cases,  such  as  those 
of  St.  Paul  and  St.  Augustine,  and  the  everyday  instances 
given  by  Starbuck  and  other  psychologists  of  religious 
experience,  we  see  that  even  in  the  case  of  much  striving, 
at  the  last  there  seems  to  be  a  yielding,  a  self-surrender  to 
what  appears  to  be  a  higher  power. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  157 

And  this  is  what  we  find,  too,  when  we  reflect  upon  the 
answers  to  prayer.  Some  strength  not  my  own,  the  re- 
hgious  man  reports,  flows  in  and  brings  to  me  peace, 
heahrig,  and  new  power  and  enthusiasm.  ^^I  can  do  all 
things,''  said  Paul,  ^'through  Christ  who  strength eneth 
me." 

And  again  long  before  in  Isaiah :  '^In  returning  and  rest 
shall  ye  be  saved ;  in  quietness  and  in  confidence  shall  be 
your  strength."  ''Thou  wilt  keep  him  in  perfect  peace 
whose  mind  is  stayed  on  thee ;  because  he  trusteth  in  thee 
—  for  in  the  Lord  is  an  everlasting  rock  —  He  is  my 
strength  and  my  salvation."     (Psalms.) 

For  cases  of  genius,  see  Emerson's  ''Inspiration" : 
"We  are  waiting  till  some  tyrannous  idea  emerging  out  of 
heaven  shall  seize  and  bereave  us  of  this  liberty  with 
which  we  are  falling  abroad."  "All  poets  have  signaHzed 
their  consciousness  of  rare  moments  when  they  were 
superior  to  themselves  —  when  a  light,  a  freedom,  a  power 
came  to  them,  which  hfted  them  to  a  performance  far 
better  than  they  could  reach  at  other  times."  And 
George  Eliot :  "After  our  subtlest  analysis  of  the  mental 
process,  we  must  still  say  that  our  highest  thoughts  and 
our  best  deeds  are  all  given  to  us." 

The  conclusion  is,  man  must  be  free  to  be  moral.  He  is 
personally  responsible.  He  must  save  himself  through 
his  own  acts ;  if  he  hardeneth  his  heart  no  righteousness 
of  another  can  save  him.  And  yet  as  a  matter  of  fact  he 
never  does  of  himself  entirely  save  himself.  He  is  saved  at 
last  by  the  grace  of  God.  But,  then,  if  he  is  saved  by  the 
"grace  of  God,"  is  he  any  longer  accountable  and  free  — 
and  what  becomes  of  moral  values  ? 

The  problem  before  us  is  that  which  appeared  histori- 
cally in  the  Pelagian  controversy  of  Augustine,  but  it  is 
in  truth  a  fundamental  problem  involving  universal  issues. 

It  is  the  problem  of  nature  versus  grace,  morahty  pure 
and  simple  versus  religion,  rationalism  versus  super- 
naturaUsm. 


158  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

The  first  step  for  us  to  take  seems  to  be  to  try  to  dis- 
cover the  real  meaning  of  grace. 

From  a  study  of  the  epistles  of  Paul,  the  "  Confessions 
of  St.  Augustine/'  and  the  use  of  this  term  in  prayers  and 
religious  experience  generally,  I  find  the  following  pos- 
sible definitions  of  grace  :  — 

The  Meaning  of  Grace.  —  Grace  as  ^'Nature"  —  i.e. 
natural  endowment. 

Grace  as  enlightenment  —  complete  revelation  and 
vision. 

Grace  as  the  subliminal  self;  or  as  the  '^better  con- 
sciousness" of  Schopenhauer. 

Grace  as  the  undivided  will. 

Grace  as  the  social  consciousness. 

Grace  as  receptivity,  responsiveness,  self-surrender 
to  the  personality  of  Christ,  or  to  an  ideal,  or  the  opening 
of  the  heart  to  all  good  influences. 

Grace  as  God's  friendship  to  the  undeserving  —  Re- 
demptive Grace. 

Grace  as  the  power  of  the  sacraments  of  the  Church  — 
i.e.  grace  made  visible  here. 

Grace  as  the  result  of  striving  —  its  reward,  so  to 
speak. 

Grace  as  the  spirit  of  self-sacrificing  love  —  (1  Cor.  13). 

Grace  as  a  gift  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  i.e.  self-identifi- 
cation with  an  ideal,  over  against  an  external  ought; 
Paul  and  Augustine  expressed  this  as  being  one  with 
Christ  —  i.e.  identification  with  the  Christ-like  spirit  — 
as  revealed  in  the  life  and  death  of  Jesus. 

Eliminating  from  the  various  definitions  the  elements 
which  belong  to  the  conditions  of  any  particular  time, 
the  common  element  which  remains  seems  to  be  some- 
thing like  this :  grace  is  something  outside  of,  or  more 
than,  the  individual  as  he  is  at  any  given  time,  —  some- 
thing which  helps  him  to  salvation  and  beatitude.  And 
*' salvation"  which  is  to  include  moral  values  can  only  be 
interpreted  as  the  attainment  of  the  true  self  —  a  self  who 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  159 

is  morally  responsible.  Such  a  self,  we  can  see,  would  have 
to  be  a  social,  a  universal,  Self. 

Now  how  does  grace  actually  help  to  this  attain- 
ment? 

At  first  the  ideal  comes  to  a  man  as  something  external 
—  a  command,  an  ought.  But  an  external  ^^Thou  shalf 
or  a  ''Thou  shalt  not,''  tends  to  contrary  action  on  the 
part  of  the  life  of  natural  impulse  and  habit.  "I  was  alive 
apart  from  the  law  once,"  ^  says  Paul  —  ''but  when  the 
commandment  came,  sin  revived  and  I  died;  and  the 
commandment,  which  was  unto  life,  this  I  found  to  be 
unto  death;  for  sin  finding  occasion  through  the  com- 
mandment beguiled  me,  and  through  it  slew  me.'' 

"Yet  the  law  is  holy  and  righteous  and  good.  Did 
then  that  which  is  good  become  death  unto  me  ?  God 
forbid.  But  sin,  that  it  might  be  shown  to  be  sin,  by 
working  death  to  tae  through  that  which  is  good ;  that 
through  the  commandment  sin  might  become  exceeding 
sinful."     (Romans  7 :  7-15.) 

The  "law"  supported  by  social  sanctions  condemned 
the  life  of  the  "natural  man"  and  it  became  acknowledged 
by  the  individual  as  sin.  And  yet  of  himself  he  could 
not  free  himself  from  this  sin  dwelling  in  him. 

"But  the  law  of  the  spirit  of  life  in  Christ  Jesus  made 
me  free  from  the  law  of  sin  and  death.  For  what  the  law 
could  not  do  in  that  it  was  weak"  was  accomplished 
through  the  acceptance  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ  and  iden- 
tification, through  this  acceptance,  of  the  individual  with 
the  divine  spirit. 

"And  if  Christ  is  in  you,  the  body  is  dead  because  of 
sin,  but  the  spirit  is  life  because  of  righteousness.  .  .  . 
And  we  know  not  what  to  pray,  but  the  Spirit  himself 
maketh  intercession  for  us." 

But  Grace  is  something  over  and  above  the  grace  which 
redeems  the  sinner,  —  though,  to  be  sure,  in  a  measure  all 
men  who  have  lived  at  all  have  probably  sinned ;  that  is, 

1  Romans  7 : 7-15. 


160  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

fallen  in  some  way  short  of  their  ideal.  But  apart  from 
the  question  of  sin,  how  can  finite  man  make  the  ideal  the 
real?  how  realize  it,  either  in  himself,  the  individual,  or 
embody  it  in  a  righteous  community? 

Youth  is  not  humble.  Vital  and  full  of  hope,  it  beheves 
all  things  are  possible  to  it,  and  also  it  beheves  in  its  own 
luck:  Such  and  such  a  misfortune,  it  says,  can  never 
happen  to  me.  Youth  hears  of  catastrophies  as  real 
events,  yet  still  it  believes,  '^  It  is  not  possible  that  I  shall 
ever  be  actually  in  one."  ^  Or,  again,  it  thinks  such  and 
such  a  fortunate  event  is  sure  to  come  to  pass.  Life  is 
to  youth  a  ''  perilous  adventure,"  yet  full  of  wonder  and 
promise  of  the  future.  So  Youth  trusts  to  its  star  and 
goes  boldly  forward.  Later  on,  we  learn  how  many  of 
the  best  things  do  not  come  by  our  unaided  efforts,  —  are 
often,  indeed,  pure  gifts.  We  learn,  too,  how  many  of  the 
worst  things  we  are  spared  through  no  merit  of  our  own. 
In  a  word,  we  learn  how  much  we  owe. 

Thus  are  we  aided  to  righteousness,  to  salvation,  in  all 
sorts  of  ways  —  ''The  spirit  bloweth  where  it  listeth." 
The  grace  of  God  may  come  to  us  through  ''openings" 
and  "uprushes,"  of  the  subUminal  consciousness;  it  may 
come  from  social  training,  social  expectations  and  demands. 
Chiefly,  perhaps,  it  comes  to  us  through  some  helpful 
and  inspiring  personahty,  some  devoted,  self-sacrificing 
life.  So  it  has  been  for  Christianity  embodied  in  the 
personahty  of  Jesus — or  as  it  was  for  Paul  in  the  Christ- 
Spirit.  But  man^s  ideal  soars  away  beyond  any  actual 
embodiment.  Hence  to  him  the  grace  of  God  is  best 
interpreted  as  an  ideal  which  is  supernatural  but  which 
still  has  a  personal  embodiment,  i.e.  which  is  actually 
realized,  but  not  in  its  totality  experienced  by  the  finite. 
This  ideal  or  complete  personality,  man  calls  God.  Such 
a  conception   contains  more  than  is  expressed  in  the 

1  As  a  striking  illustration  of  this,  see  Arnold  Bennett's  "Hilda  Lessa^ 
ways,"  also  the  Journal  of  Marie  Bashkirtseff,  "  Cast  moi  — moi  — moi," 
to  whom  this  misfortune  has  come. 


THE   WAY  OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  161 

notion  of  a  social  community.  Yet  as  a  universal  will 
and  love  it  is  mediated  to  the  individual  through  nature, 
through  other  individuals,^  and  through  the  social  or 
community  life,  and  he  learns  that  to  realize  this  imi- 
versal  will  is  his  own  task. 

A  young  friend,  a  college  graduate,  wrote  me  a  while 
ago,  ^'I  have  been  thinking  very  much  about  ^  the  grace 
of  God '  (a  phrase  I  should  never  think  of  using)  and 
what  it  possibly  can  mean."  She  comes  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  it  means  acceptance  of  the  laws  of  the  universe 
when  they  conflict  with  our  emotional  nature,  and  should 
properly  be  called  '^ self-control."  By  '^New  Thought," 
she  adds,  it  would  be  called  "  right  or  harmonious  think- 
ing." This  view,  however,  puts  the  emphasis  too  much 
on  the  side  of  the  individual  and  makes  the  grace  of  God 
identical  with  individual  striving  and  merit.  This  is 
perhaps  the  tendency  of  modern  ''Liberal  thought." 
But  with  the  strong  idealistic  and  humanitarian  tenden- 
cies of  our  day,  it  seems  as  if  sooner  or  later  we  should  be 
led  back  to  a  belief  in ' '  the  grace  of  God."  Just  as  spiritual 
prayer  is  both  an  appeal  to  something  above  us  (the  Divine 
Spirit,  or  however  we  may  name  it),  and  also  an  auto- 
suggestion, so  the  divine  grace  is  at  once  more  than  our- 
selves and  also  our  own  truest  selfhood  —  the  "more" 
than  ourselves.  "The  grace  of  God"  is  a  beautiful 
expression  for  the  first,  and  it  seems  a  pity  to  lose  it. 
Expressions  like  this,  and  such  terms  as  "Justification," 
"Election,"  "Atonement,"  "Incarnation,"  if  interpreted 
philosophically,  there  seems  no  reason  whatever  for  not 
accepting.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  a  little  difficult  to 
free  these  terms  from  their  Jewish  legalistic  or  Greek 

*  As  an  illustration  of  the  mediation  of  divine  grace  in  the  form  of  a 
social  process,  see  Browning's  "Pippa  Passes."  In  this  poem  the 
little  silk-spinner  from  a  mill,  on  her  one  holiday  in  the  year,  imagines 
herself,  in  turn,  the  four  happiest  people  (as  she  supposes)  in  Asolo. 
As  she  passes,  singing,  the  song  of  the  pure-hearted  girl,  coming  at  the 
critical  moment,  in  each  of  the  four  instances  saves  from  the  yielding  to 
sin,  or  the  committing  of  further  crime. 

M 


162  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

mythological  significance;  and  they  are  a  stumbUng- 
block  to  those  who,  having  been  brought  to  the  verge  of 
religious  darkness  and  despair  through  irrational  creeds, 
are  just  beginning  to  see  the  coming  of  the  dawn. 

The  great  difficulty  with  modern  rationalism  and  hb- 
eraUsm  seems  to  me  to  be  that  in  emphasizing  the  natural 
goodness  in  the  universe,  it  fails  to  recognize  that  there 
is  really  such  a  thing  as  a  '^  state  of  sin,  ^'  and  the  need  for 
the  individual  or  community  not  merely  of  growth^  but  of 
transformation.  And  in  the  second  place,  it  is  so  actively 
occupied  with  the  amelioration  of  material  and  social 
conditions  that  it  is  in  some  danger  of  forgetting  that  the 
Hfe  of  the  spirit  is  not  really  dependent  on  these  things,  for 
''The  life  is  more  than  meat  and  the  spirit  than  raiment." 

Hence  we  find  a  tendency  to  a  rather  shallow  optimism 
and  a  lack  of  the  mystical  in  reUgious  experience.  To  the 
observer,  the  animal  world  seems  full  of  piteous  pain. 
But  in  the  human  world  and  everyday  experience  there 
is  fully  conscious  and  so  doubtless  deeper  suffering. 
Songs  and  ballads  which  express  the  life  of  the  people 
often  reveal  an  unspeakable  sadness.  ''No  wonder," 
writes  George  Eliot,  "man's  rehgion  has  much  sorrow  in 
it ;  no  wonder  he  needs  a  suffering  God."  No  wonder  the 
experience  of  fife  has  led  to  the  dogma  of  the  atonement ! 
There  is  need  of  transformation  from  the  natural  life. 

The  question  is  now,  how  is  this  transformation  to  be 
accomplished  ?  We  are  thus  led  back  once  more,  after 
some  disgression,  to  our  main  problem,  the  relation  of 
grace  and  merit,  necessity  and  freedom,  sin  and  respon- 
sibility. To  be  a  self,  a  person,  means  to  be  free,  —  but 
if  grace  is  irresistible,  if  grace  does  all  for  man,  have  we 
not  ipso  facto  abandoned  freedom?  So  we  return  to  our 
problem. 

To  hold  that  man's  salvation  is  dependent  on  something 
quite  apart  from  his  moral  strivings  and  merit  seems  an 
irrational  doctrine.  Yet  what  is  more  evident  than  the 
fact  that  the  "new  birth"  is  dependent  on  much  that  is 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  163 

outside  of  the  individuaFs  personal  struggles  and  deserts? 
''Of  myself/'  says  Paul,  ''I  am  nothing.''  ''Not  that  we 
are  sufficient  of  ourselves  to  help  ourselves."  "By  the 
grace  of  God  I  am  what  I  am."  "I  laboured,  yet  not  I  but 
the  grace  of  God  which  was  with  me";  and,  finally,  in 
Paul's  prayer  and  its  answer :  — 

"Concerning  this  thing  I  besought  the  Lord  thrice  that  it  might 
depart  from  me.  And  he  hath  said  unto  me :  My  grace  is  sufficient 
for  thee;  for  my  power  is  made  perfect  in  weakness.  Wherefore  I 
take  pleasure  in  weaknesses,  in  injuries,  in  necessities,  in  persecutions, 
in  distresses,  for  Christ's  sake  ;  for  when  I  am  weak,  then  am  I  strong. " 

Shall  we  not  admit  that  all  this  is  true  to  experience? 
It  may  be  well  to  consider  for  a  moment  what  St. 
Thomas  Aquinas  has  to  say  on  this  matter. 

Notion  of  Grace  in  the  "  Summa."  —  He  asks: 
"Can  man  without  the  gift  of  grace  merit  eternal  life?" 
"No,"  he  replies,  "for  if  he  is  a  sinner  he  could  not 
merit  eternal  life,  but  rather  death  unless  God  had  first 
forgiven  his  sin,  and  this  is  by  grace." 

But  there  is  a  double  nature  in  man,  i,e,  before  and 
after  the  fall,  as  in  the  case  of  Adam.  But  the  earlier 
state  cannot  deserve  beatitude  because  its  merit  depends 
on  divine  preordination.  Moreover,  an  act  of  merit 
cannot  exceed  that  proportion  of  virtue  which  is  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  act,  and  nothing  can  drive  it  further ;  but 
eternal  life  far  exceeds  all  natural  creation,  for  "eye hath 
not  seen,  nor  ear  heard,  neither  hath  it  entered  into  the 
heart  of  man,  what  God  hath  prepared  for  those  that 
love  him." 

The  conclusion  is  that  God  ordains  human  nature  to 
eternal  life,  not  through  its  own  merit,  but  by  the  aid  of 
grace.  For,  indeed,  man  would  have  no  virtue  whatso- 
ever unless  he  had  first  received  it  from  God. 

But  there  is  such  a  state  of  mind  as  habitual  grace. 
Is  man  able  to  prepare  himself  for  grace  of  himself  without 
the  aid  of  grace  ?  Man  is  not  able  unless  moved  by  God. 
He  has  a  susceptible  disposition,  but  we  can  go  on  ad 


164  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

infinitum^  unless  we  finally  admit  that  a  man  is  first 
moved  by  grace,  for  this  requires  nothing  to  go  before. 
But  man  is  not  able  to  deserve  this  first  grace.  He  is  not 
then  able  to  wish  or  do  the  good  without  grace.  But  what 
of  freedom?  Man  is  able  to  deliberate  and  choose.  Yes, 
but  that  he  does  deliberate  must  ultimately  rest  on  some- 
thing external,  i.e.  it  is  by  the  grace  of  God.  Nature 
chooses  God  as  the  chief  and  end  of  natural  goods,  but  the 
state  of  grace  chooses  God  more  eminently,  i.e.  as  the  ob- 
ject of  beatitude.  For  the  highest  grade  of  such  choice 
is  not  only  of  love,  but  also  the  reason  of  loving,  and  the 
measure  of  the  highest  grade  is  that  by  which  Charitas 
—  the  state  of  grace  —  chooses  God  as  blessedness. 

But  may  not  a  man  established  in  grace  deserve  eternal 
life  through  worthy  deeds?  Acts  of  merit  can  be  con- 
sidered in  two  ways:  — 

First  as  proceeding  from  free  will. 

Second  as  proceeding  from  grace  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 

The  first  cause  is  the  grace  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  which  is 
the  sufficient  cause  and  due  to  the  mercy  of  God ;  but  our 
merit  is  the  subsequent  cause. 

An  act  of  faith  is  not  meritorious  unless  done  through 
love.  Charitas  moves  the  other  virtues  to  work.  It 
does  not  lessen  the  labor,  for  it  works  yet  greater  things. 
As  the  ultimate  cause,  St.  Thomas  seems  to  trace  all 
finally  to  grace. 

"  Quia  ratio  hujus  menti  dependet  ex  motione  divinse  gratiae." 

Final  Meaning  of  Grace.  —  The  doctrine  of  grace 
seems  really  to  mean  that  man's  ideal  is  no  longer  a  mere 
external  ''ought''  to  which  he  is  rebellious,  or  which  he 
accepts  unthinkingly.  It  means  that  he  has  come  to 
love  this  ideal,  and  to  consciously  identify  himself  with 
it.  Then  he  has  attained  a  state  of  grace.  Now  if  we 
ask  with  St.  Thomas  whence  comes  this  love  and  interest,  — 
is  it  the  unearned  gift  of  God,  or  is  it  the  result  of  man's 
personal  striving  towards  the  already  recognized  ideal,  — 


THE   WAY  OF   LIFE — ITS   SOUKCES  165 

we  see  that  whether  we  think  of  grace  as  nature  or  social 
influence,  or  as  something  divine  in  the  sense  of  the  uni- 
versal will  as  a  social  ideal,  the  individual  has  never  de- 
served all  that  he  has  received.  We  have  seen  how  in  all 
sorts  of  ways  this  is  the  case,  and  how  especially  this 
unearned  grace  comes  through  the  self-sacrificing  love  of 
others,  —  the  atoning  life  symbolized  by  the  church  in 
the  ^' blood  of  Christ"  and  the  ''cross  of  Christ." 

But  if  all  this  is  true,  once  again,  what  place  is  there  left 
for  moral  worth  and  human  freedom  ?  The  facts  seem  to 
be  that  man  is  bound  or  determined  on  the  one  side  by 
his  natural  inheritances  and  by  his  social  environment, 
and  on  the  other  by  the  irresistible  ideal,  the  grace  of 
God  which  constraineth  him. 

On  the  other  hand,  moral  values  are  bound  up  with 
freedom.  I  can  because  I  ought,  Kant  says,  therefore 
I  am  morally  responsible  and  free. 

Final  Meaning  of  Freedom.  —  In  the  first  place, 
to  answer  this  question,  we  want  to  know  a  little  more 
definitely  what  we  can  mean  by  freedom.  To  be  free 
to  act  this  way  and  that,  without  steady  purpose  and 
ideal,  this  is  not  to  be  free.  As  any  one  can  see,  it  is  to  be 
the  slave  of  caprice  and  impulse.  And  therefore  it  seems 
that  if  the  grace  of  God  is  identified  with  the  ''subUm- 
inal  consciousness,"  with  the  emotional,  suggestible  self, 
the  resulting  action  is  not  freedom,  though  such  subliminal 
influences  may  act  for  good,  as  in  the  case  of  the  inspiration 
of  genius  and  of  religious  insight.  To  be  free  means,  first, 
not  to  be  causally  determined  or  explained  by  any  external 
other.  Now  almost  everything  in  the  individual  can  be 
explained  and  accounted  for  by  his  inheritance  and  train- 
ing. There  is  just  one  thing  which  cannot  be  so  explained, 
that  is  his  own  intent  and  meaning.  That  is,  the  irreduc- 
ible, the  unique,  and  individual.  The  individual,  —  that 
is  the  indefinable,  as  logic  has  it.  Free  will  is  not  capri- 
cious choosing.  It  means,  ''I  serve  in  my  own  way  the 
imiversal   ideal,"  —  in   religious   language,  — ''the  Will 


166  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

of  God."  How  often  people  say  to  us:  ''Give  up  your 
way,  work  in  miney  it  is  a  better,  a  more  useful,  a  more 
practical  way."  But  if  we  are  brave,  we  refuse.  Not, 
of  course,  from  caprice  and  contrariness,  nor  from  the 
impulse  of  the  subliminal  consciousness,  but  because  at  the 
last  we  cannot  go  back  on  that  which  life  means  to  us,  — 
our  intent,  our  interest,  our  ideal ;  in  short,  our  own  will  to 
be  individual.  How  I  came  to  have  this  particular  in- 
terest and  ideal  may  be  explained  by  my  ancestors,  by 
race  and  environment ;  but  that  it  is  now  mine  —  the 
will  to  be  an  individual  —  cannot  be  explained  by  any 
such  reference.  The  freedom  we  want  is  to  be  ourselves, 
individual.  But  the  individual,  that  is  the  unique.  Thus 
freedom  seems  to  reduce  to  uniqueness.  Ultimate  and 
prior,  from  a  temporal  point  of  view,  is  the  fact  of  grace : 
''Not  that  we  loved  Him,  but  that  He  first  loved  us." 
So  the  good  Shepherd  seeks  the  wandering  sheep,  and  in 
all  sorts  of  ways  He  seeks  it.  But  essential  to  moral 
worth  is  man's  own  effort.  He  is  not  saved,  however, 
till  this  effort  towards  an  external  ideal,  "the  law,"  has 
become  joyful  and  self-conscious  identification  with  the 
ideal.  But  even  here  he  has  been  helped,  taken  pos- 
session of,  so  to  speak,  by  grace.  To  attain  to  the  beatific 
vision,  "the  seeing  of  what  is  believed,"  the  will  must  be 
won  by  grace.  And  so  as  St.  Thomas  pointed  out,  we 
become  involved  in  an  infinite  process. 

Now  if  freedom  really  means  individuality,  —  unique- 
ness of  purpose,  —  then  this  same  question  comes  up 
again  in  a  rather  different  form.  For  uniqueness  of  the 
finite  individual  is  teleologically  determined  by  his  re- 
lation to  the  whole.^  Or,  as  religion  has  it,  to  be  free  is 
to  serve  the  will  of  God,  but  this  will  is  triumphant  and 
omnipotent  in  any  case.  If  uniqueness  of  the  individual 
depends  upon  the  purpose  of  the  Absolute,  then  every 
individual,  finite  purpose  is  unique  by  virtue  of  its  place 

1  Professor  Royce,  in  ^*The  World  and  the  Individual,"  says :  *'The 
self  gains  its  very  individuality  through  its  relation  to  God/' 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOUKCES  167 

in  this  whole,  and  there  seems  to  be  no  difference  between 
those  who  have  striven  and  won  through  tribulation,  and 
those  who  have  simply  followed  caprice  and  impulse, 
or  yielded  to  temptation  generally.  In  a  word,  once 
again  moral  distinctions  and  values  seem  lost.  Now 
this  would  be  a  serious  charge  to  bring  against  any  philo- 
sophical hypothesis. 

We  seem  to  have  reached  this  point :  If  the  individual 
will  in  its  supposed  freedom  is  identical  with  the  will  of 
God,  then  the  world  as  a  whole  is  static  and  changeless ; 
there  is  no  novelty,  no  creation,  no  progress.  It  is  the 
world  described  by  Paul's  epistle  to  the  Romans;  the 
world  of  the  potter  and  his  clay  of  Omar  Khayydm's 
Bubdiydt :  — 

"We  are  no  other  than  a  moving  row 
Of  magic  shadow-shapes  that  come  and  go 
Round  with  this  sun-illumined  Lantern  held 
In  Midnight  by  the  Master  of  the  Show." 

We  appear  to  be  more  or  less  involved  in  a  circular  pro- 
cess as  regards  the  relation  of  grace  and  merit,  of  freedom 
and  necessity.  Logically,  *' merit"  and  ''freedom"  seem 
absolutely  essential  to  moral  salvation,  but  concrete 
experience  and  religious  feeling  put  the  emphasis  on 
''necessity"  and  on  "grace." 

The  foregoing  discussion  has  brought  us  into  close 
connection  with  the  results  of  the  opening  chapter. 

In  that  chapter  we  saw  that  the  roots  of  religion  are  to  be 
found  in  the  essential  ideality  of  man's  nature.  In  our 
present  chapter  we  discover  that  with  this  fact  of  ideality 
is  bound  up  man's  uniqueness,  moral  responsibility,  and 
freedom. 

But  just  as  in  the  opening  chapter  we  found  ideality 
besieged  and  held  captive  by  the  insistence  of  religious 
immediacy,  so  here  we  are  obsessed  by  the  idea  of  divine 
grace  and  its  power  of  salvation  as  something  over  and 
above  man's  free  intent  and  purpose. 


168  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Perhaps  further  light  may  come  to  us  as  we  proceed ; 
more  especially  when  we  consider  the  ''forms"  of  the 
religious  life  in  Chapter  V. 

Ill 

SOCIAL  AUTHORITY  AND  INDIVIDUAL  JUDGMENT 

Another  opposition  in  religion  is  that  between  ''author- 
ity" and  individual  judgment.  The  discussion  of  this 
problem  grows  rather  naturally,  as  we  shall  see,  out  of 
the  foregoing  discussion  of  the  opposition  between  grace 
and  merit,  necessity  and  freedom. 

Authority,  expressed  in  tradition,  in  holy  writ,  in 
dogma,  creed,  sacrament,  religious  organizations  and 
orders,  represents  the  force  of  the  social  consciousness 
over  against  the  right  of  the  individual  to  judge  for  him- 
self. This  form  of  opposition  appears  particularly  in  re- 
lation to  the  criterion  of  truth  and  of  right.  Is  the  final 
test  of  truth  individual  or  social?  Is  the  standard  of 
morality  to  be  set  by  the  individual  conscience  or  by  the 
decree  of  society? 

On  the  one  hand,  are  the  rationalists  in  religion  who 
claim  the  right  of  the  individual  mind  and  conscience  to 
determine  for  the  individual  himself  what  he  should  be- 
Ueve  and  what  he  ought  to  do.  Although  a  rationalist 
in  religion  appears  as  the  very  opposite  of  the  mystic 
type,  this  claim  tends  to  bring  him  into  the  class  of  Quiet- 
ists.  Friends,  and  other  mystics,  the  followers  of  the  inner 
light  and  of  the  subliminal  consciousness.  We  have  an 
example  in  Theodore  Parker,  who  claimed  that  his  con- 
science was  an  infallible  guide.  But  psychological  in- 
vestigation shows  that  the  dicta  of  the  immediate  and 
subliminal  consciousness  are  not  always  valuable.  They 
are  sometimes  trivial,  and  sometimes  they  are  abnormal.^ 

1  E.g.  William  James,  ^'Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,"  p.  476. 
**The  Subliminal  Region  contains  every  kind  of  matter;  'seraph  and 
snake'  abide  there  side  by  side." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  169 

How,  then,  are  we  to  determine  when  the  dictum  of  the 
immediate  individual  consciousness  is  sane  and  its  revela- 
tions trustworthy? 

A  test  is  needed  not  supplied  by  'Hhe  subliminar' 
itself.  If  it  is  claimed  by  the  individual,  as  Antigone 
claimed,  that  the  laws  which  she  obeyed  are  '^  unwritten 
and  imchanging  laws  of  God  —  not  of  to-day  or  yesterday, 
but  from  everlasting"  —  '^No  man  can  tell  at  what  time 
they  appeared '';  if  these  ^4aws"  are  not  the  ''estab- 
lished" social  laws  and  we  try  to  carry  them  back  to 
perennial  human  instincts,  is  there  not  a  return  here  to 
a  nature-worship  of  ''hidden  forces"  of  life,  of  "blind 
necessities,"  —  a  kind  of  Dionysos  worship,  —  that  is,  a 
naturalism,  over  against  the  religion  of  the  spirit?  A 
return  to  nature  is  a  breaking  away  in  a  sense  from  the 
limitations  of  self,  but  it  is  not  moral  growth.  And 
have  we  not  already  seen  that  there  is  a  distinction  be- 
tween the  natural  man  and  the  transformed  spiritual? 
The  spiritual  man  does  not  simply  follow  natural  instinct. 
He  lives  in  the  light  of  an  ideal.  A  spiritual  religion  only 
is  valuable,  and  we  mean  by  spiritual,  ethical  and  ideal- 
istic. 

It  is  difficult  to  distinguish  the  "inner  light"  from 
natural  instinct ;  thus  we  are  driven  to  the  other  side  of 
the  opposition.  And  as  we  have  already  seen,  as  a  matter 
of  fact  actual  religious  belief  is  largely  social.  It  is  belief 
in  established  authority  based  upon  tradition  and  brought 
to  the  individual  through  his  social  inheritance  and  train- 
ing, and  the  "suggestions"  of  the  community  in  which  he 
lives.  Religion  in  primitive  days  expressed  through  social 
rites  and  institutions  the  bond  which  held  a  group  to- 
gether in  a  common  life.  The  individual  accepted  his 
religion  as  he  did  his  other  social  obligations,  for  not  to  do 
so  was  to  make  himself  an  alien  from  the  common  group 
life,  and  to  cut  himself  off  from  right  relations  to  the 
tribal  gods.^    This  bond  was  sanctioned  and  established 

1  See  Robertson  Smith,  op.  cit. 


170  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

by  its  workability,  ^.e.  at  first  through  success  in  war  and 
by  the  prosperity  of  the  group,  and  further  by  miracles. 

But  the  religious  tradition,  which  at  one  time  expresses 
fairly  well  the  ideals  of  the  social  group,  ceases  to  do  so. 
The  creeds  and  institutions  become  outworn.  They  no 
longer  embody  the  inner  life,  the  needs  and  aspirations 
of  humanity;  they  are  dead  ideals,  and  here  and 
there  an  individual  more  ardent  and  more  reflective  than 
the  rest  has  the  courage  to  express  his  revolt  from  them. 

Such  rebels  against  established  authority  have  been 
the  great  religious  personalities,  —  Buddha,  Zoroaster, 
Socrates,  Aknaton  Pharaoh  of  Egypt,  the  Hebrew  prophets. 
Such  men  break  away  from  the  authority  of  institutional 
religion  and  make  appeal  to  individual  judgment  and 
conviction.  And  after  all,  what  is  the  warrant  for  the 
authority  of  tradition  with  its  various  social  embodiments  ? 
It  is  as  a  rule  traced  back  to  some  supposed  direct  in- 
spiration. If  the  value  of  this  be  not  found  in  individual 
experience,  what  is  the  test  of  its  value?  If  attested 
by  miracles,^  then  there  must  be  some  further  test  for 
the  value  of  these  wonders,  for  it  is  not  held  that  all  of 
these  are  valuable,  since  workers  in  magic  —  witches, 
so-called,  and  sorcerers  —  can  produce  miracles. 

If  the  subliminal  experience  is  the  test  of  divine  in- 
spiration, then  we  are  back  at  the  old  difficulty.  If  di- 
vine, this  experience  should  be  a  guide  for  all  men,  but 
as  an  experience  it  is  purely  personal,  and  carries  in  itself 
no  universal  warrant  that  others  should  accept  it. 

If  the  inspiration  is  to  be  attested  by  its  workability, 
what  exactly  do  we  mean  by  this  term  ?  Must  there  not 
still  be  some  test  of  the  value  of  the  results  achieved  ?  Is 
success  in  war  or  an  abundance  of  crops  and  flocks  a 
proof  of  divine  intervention  and  blessing?  If  such  were 
the  case,  then  Jahwe,  the  god  of  the  Israelites,  must  often 
have  helped  the  enemy.     The  Israelites,  who  at  one  time 

^  A  Miracle :  an  interruption  of  the  orderly  working  of  the  natural 
process  which  science  afiGu:ms. 


THE  WAY  OF  LIFE — ITS   SOURCES  171 

had  prayed  for  such  material  ''good/^  had  either  to  change 
their  conception  of  the  meaning  of  divine  blessing  or 
abandon  Jahwe.  Hebrew  religion  became  ethical;  but 
for  an  ethical  religion,  miracles  which  contradict  natural 
law,  even  if  they  could  be  accepted  in  a  scientific  age, 
would  be  no  proof  of  spiritual  value. 

'^Authority''  thus  seems  to  lead  us  back  to  the  insight 
or  judgment  of  the  individual  (or  possibly  to  that  of  a 
select  group).  No  external  form  of  authority  can  pos- 
sibly justify  ethical  values.  The  standard  of  the  right 
must  mean  that  which  is  right  to  me.  The  '*  witness  of 
the  spirit  ^^  is  an  inner  conviction  and  criterion  of  value. 

Do  we  say,  then,  the  inner  vision  of  the  individual  is 
ultimate?  Yet  whence  this  vision?  It  arises  out  of  a 
social  background  which  partly  makes  it  what  it' is.  If 
a  man  comes  of  honorable  stock,  and  from  a  home 
where  pure  and  high  ideals  are  cherished  and  habits 
of  self-control  practised,  we  feel  confidence  that  such  an 
one  is  likely  himself  to  have  a  high  standard  of  character 
and  conduct.  The  outward  standard  of  authority  has 
influenced  and  helped  to  create  the  inner  conviction,  and 
yet  if  he  has  not  been  able  to  make  the  outer  right  his 
very  own,  when  he  goes  out  into  the  world  with  its  mani- 
fold temptations  and  its  dijfferent  standards  of  value, 
such  an  one  will  not  be  able  to  stand  fast.  To  this  fact  the 
life  of  many  a  young  man  or  woman  coining  from  a  good 
country  home  to  a  great  city  bears  sorrowful  witness. 

Out  of  whatever  background,  then,  the  '* inner  witness'' 
may  have  developed,  it  must  ultimately  be  the  individuars 
very  own  choice  and  determination  which  judges  what  is 
right  and  what  course  to  follow.  Social  authority  cannot 
be  ultimate,  for  social  standards  themselves  change.  The 
social  consciousness  is  a  growing  thing,  and  as  its  own 
development  proves,  it  is  not  on  a  level  with  its  own 
highest  products,  —  the  highest  individual  experiences, 
—  since  society  persecutes  and  slays  the  prophets  and 
afterwards  comes  to  accept  their  doctrines,  and  perhaps  to 


172  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

worship  them  as  gods.  Especially  is  the  religious  social 
consciousness  intensely  and  fanatically  loyal  to  its  tra- 
ditions and  customs.  Thus  religious  motives  are  the 
underlying  cause  of  the  persecutions  and  martyrdoms  in 
which  history  abounds. 

We  seem  to  have  reached  the  point  that  some  individual 
experience  at  any  given  time  is  more  valuable,  more  truly 
a  criterion  of  truth  than  that  of  the  social  group  to  which 
it  belongs.  It  grows,  to  be  sure,  out  of  the  common  social 
life ;  but  it  reacts  upon  this  common  experience  and  brings 
back  to  it  something  novel  and  unique.  This  insight  or 
conviction  of  the  individual  can  be  no  mere  whim,  per- 
sonal wish,  or  will  to  believe,  for  if  so  it  were  on  a  par  with 
the  '^subliminal."  Nor  is  it  an  infallible  judgment.  It 
is  a  judgment  which,  striving  to  free  itself  from  all  in- 
terested motives,  believing  in  the  '' sanctity  of  human 
experience,"  and  keeping  in  close  touch  with  life,  seeks 
in  single-minded  devotion  to  the  truth,  and  in  all  hu- 
miUty,  to  discern,  in  the  light  of  all  that  is  involved,  what 
is  the  reasonable  and  enlightened  point  of  view.  Such  a 
judgment  will  change  if  greater  Hght  comes,  nor  probably, 
can  any  judgment  of  beUef  quite  free  itself  from  the  emo- 
tional bias  of  the  individual  temperament. 

In  three  ways  the  individual  judgment  is  bound  up 
with  and  falls  back  upon  the  social  judgment. 

First;  Because  it  has  grown  to  be  what  it  is  in  part, 
perhaps  largely,  through  the  suggestions  of  the  social  en- 
vironment. 

Second;  It  may  change  through  social  influences. 

Third;  It  needs  the  support  of  social  sanction.  It 
seeks,  that  is,  to  be  in  accord  with  the  deepest  wisdom 
of  the  past,  and  it  seeks  social  response. 

Hence  the  difficulty  as  to  whether  the  final  test  of  truth 
is  individual  or  social  is  hke  the  difficulty  as  to  whether 
man  is  saved  by  grace  or  by  merit. 

The  higher  insight  of  the  individual  may  not  meet  with 
social  response.     There  may  be  a  discrepancy  between 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  173 

the  ^' ought"  of  the  individual  and  the  '4s^'  of  society. 
In  such  a  case  the  individual  has  to  remain  true  to  the 
inner  Ught.  This  is  what  Socrates  meant  when  under 
the  sentence  of  death  he  said  to  his  accusers,  "I  would 
rather  have  spoken  after  my  fashion  and  die  than  after 
yours  and  live,  for  I  feel  that  there,  on  trial  for  my  life, 
I  dare  not  say  anything  unworthy/' 

An  enlightened  conscience,  however,  over  against  in- 
dividual caprice,  means  a  consciousness  responsive  to  all 
higher  social  suggestions  —  to  all  influences  of  the  Holy 
Spirit.  These  suggestions  must  be  tested  and  reacted 
upon  by  the  inner  standard  of  value.  The  Hebrew 
prophets  interpreted  their  inner  vision,  —  which  surely  also 
grew  out  of  reflection  upon  the  life  of  their  people  —  as 
a  'Hhus  saith  the  Lord."  That  is,  the  individual  vision 
of  the  prophet  had  a  social  background  and  environment, 
and  also  the  prophets  sought  a  form  of  social  sanction. 
Yet  if  the  divine  will  is  social  it  remains  ideal  —  for  it 
is  not  completely  found  in  any  existing  society. 

So  we  come  back  once  more  to  the  problem,  the  para- 
dox, or  circular  process  of  the  individual  religious  ex- 
perience and  the  social  religious  experience. 


"  That  only  which  we  have  within  can  we  see  without. 
If  we  meet  no  gods,  it  is  because  we  harbor  none.  .  .  . 
He  only  is  rightly  immortal  to  whom  all  things  are  immortal." 

—  R.  W.  Emerson. 

"  Seeing  she  lives  and  of  her  joy  of  life 
Creatively  has  given  us  blood  and  breath 
For  endless  war  and  never  wound  unhealed, 
The  gloomy  wherefor  of  our  battle-field 
Solves  in  the  spirit,  wrought  of  her  through  strife 
To  read  her  own  and  trust  her  down  to  death." 

—  George  Meredith. 


CHAPTER   IV  (Continued) 
The  Way  of  Life  —  Its  Sources 

IV 

the  inner  and  the  outer 

The  opposition  between  authority  and  individual 
judgment  leads  us  over  directly  to  another  set  of  prob- 
lems, viz.  to  the  opposition  in  religious  experience  be- 
tween the  Inner  and  the  Outer,  the  Literal  and  the 
Spiritual,  the  Worldly  and  the  Other-worldly. 

In  all  our  investigation  of  religious  experience,  emphasis 
has  been  put  on  the  fact  that  reUgion  should  be  spiritual 
and  an  affair  of  the  inner  life.  Not  with  ^Hithing  of 
mint,  anise,  and  cummin,"  not  with  lip-service,  must 
the  divine  be  sought.  ''God  is  spirit,  and  they  that 
worship  Him  must  worship  Him  in  spirit  and  in  truth." 

This  appears  as  the  highest  aspect  of  all  historical 
religions.  And  yet  as  a  matter  of  fact  in  history  religion 
seems  to  be  very  much  a  thing  of  the  outer  life.  Not 
only  did  primitive  man  seek  to  woo  the  capricious  will 
of  his  gods  with  incantations  and  offerings  and  with 
ceremonies  in  their  honor;  but  ev^n  mystics  and 
Quakers,  even  monasticism  itself,  reveal  this  external 
aspect  of  the  religious  experience. 

Both  tendencies,  then,  appear  as  aspects  of  religion, 
and  we  seem  justified  in  asking,  is  the  ultimate  source 
of  religion  inner  or  outer? 

In  fact,  each  tendency  seems  to  require  and  call  for  the 
other.  No  ritual,  dogma,  or  religious  custom  was  at 
the  outset  a  mere  form  artificially  devised,  and  without 
inner  spiritual  meaning. 

"Never  from  lips  of  cunning  fell 

The  thrilUng  Delphic  oracle." 

175 


176  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

'^Our  creeds/'  it  has  been  said,  ^'are  but  the  brief 
abstract  of  our  prayer  and  song.''  Recent  investigators 
of  religious  phenomena  seem  to  consider  the  outer  primary. 
Thus  Ames :  ^  ''Religious  customs,  taboos,  rites,  and 
ceremonies  rise  unconsciously.  They  concern  group 
welfare.  They  spring  from  the  powerful,  unreasoning 
will  to  live  of  the  entire  group."  Yet  it  seems  difficult 
here  to  separate  the  outer  from  the  inner.  These  out- 
ward forms  would  not  have  arisen  without  this  more  or 
less  unconscious  ''will  to  live." 

If  early  religious  rites  expressed  in  symbols  the  bond 
of  the  common  life,  still  there  must  have  been  some 
more  or  less  conscious  recognition  of  this  bond  itself. 
It  is  not  altogether  because  religion  is  social  that  it  is 
external;  yet  it  seems  true  that  it  is  more  difficult  to 
keep  a  group  at  a  high  spiritual  level  than  it  is  to  keep 
some  single  individuals.  Yet  for  both  individual  and 
social  experience,  some  form  of  embodiment  is  necessary. 

In  religious  experience  as  elsewhere,  we  find  man  for- 
ever striving  to  realize  his  dream  and  aspiration,  to  make 
the  ideal  the  actual,  to  transform  the  "is"  into  the 
"ought  to  be."  But  in  our  actual  life  this  is  to  strive 
to  make  the  inner  the  outer. 

Thus  we  are  led  at  once  to  a  recognition  of  the  eternal 
tension  and  conffict  between  these  two  tendencies. 

The  opposition  appears  in  the  logical  forms  of  the  two 
tendencies  as  well  as  in  the  concrete  experience  of  them. 

The  two  processes,  then,  belong  to  one  whole,  and  yet 
this  whole,  as  we  know  it  in  time  at  least,  is  really  never 
complete.  It  exists,  i.e.,  by  virtue  of  a  certain  defect. 
For  as  soon  as  the  spiritual  process  of  the  inner  life  has 
embodied  itself  in  some  outward  form,  this  form  repeated 
over  and  over  again  tends  to  become  a  matter  of  habit 
and  routine,  a  mere  "ghost"  of  the  ideal  significance,  — 
the  vision  of  the  prophet,  —  which  probably,  indeed,  at 
the  outset  it  never  completely  expressed,  since  for  the 

1  Ames,  *i*  Psychology  of  Religious  Experience,"  p.  12. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE — ITS   SOURCES  177 

ideal  of  the  individual  to  be  accepted  by  society  some 
compromise  is  generally  necessary.  The  prophet's  dream 
and  programme  for  a  spiritually  redeemed  Israel  becomes 
a  matter  of  ceremonial  purifications  and  legal  require- 
ments, until  another  dreamer  and  reformer  comes  who 
overthrows  or  revitalizes  the  old  forms  by  creating  new 
values ;  and  to  this  process  there  appears  to  be  no  end. 
It  is  from  the  point  of  view  of  formal  logic  a  conflict  and 
tension  between  two  processes,  the  serial  process  on  the 
one  hand  and  the  cyclic  on  the  other. 

On  the  one  hand,  we  have  the  ^^ife  of  the  spirit,"  the 
righteousness  of  the  heart  and  its  inner  values  of  peace 
and  gladness,  and  over  against  it  the  life  of  external 
service,  of  form  and  of  the  letter. 

Now  when  we  consider  the  instances  of  the  spiritual 
tendency  in  religion,  the  main  characteristics  seem  to  me 
to  be  :  First,  that  it  is  a  matter  of  the  inner  life ;  second, 
that  the  goal  sought  is  an  ideal  end,  a  heavenly  city, 
something  beyond  the  actual  process  of  seeking;  and 
third,  that  every  term  or  element  in  the  process  is  unique 
and  can  never  be  repeated.  In  a  word,  it  is  a  serial  pro- 
cess, and  it  has  the  character  of  such  a  series,  where  A 
implies  A  (A  -<  A)  is  never  true. 

In  opposition  to  the  spiritual  tendency  in  religious 
experience  is  the  tendency  to  the  literal  and  worldly. 
The  temporal  forms  in  which  this  tendency  expresses 
itself  are  religious  habits  and  customs,  traditions,  creeds 
and  dogmas,  rites,  ceremonies,  institutions  and  religious 
orders.  All  of  these  are  relatively  permanent  or  cyclic 
processes.  For  the  acceptance  of  the  letter  means  that 
that  which  was  given  once,  even  though  colored  by  the 
prevailing  notions  of  the  age,  is  given  once  for  all,  and 
that  ^' merit''  may  be  acquired  or  salvation  hereafter 
secured  through  the  frequent  performance  of  rites,  the 
repetition  of  creeds  and  dogmas,  and,  in  general,  the 
keeping  up  of  traditional  modes  of  action. 

Now  the  constant  repetition  of  rites  and  observances 


178  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

leads  to  a  mechanical  religion.  Things  are  done  as  a 
matter  of  course,  without  fresh  thought  and  feeling. 
On  entering  his  church  the  devout  Catholic  makes  the 
sign  of  the  cross  and  bows  before  the  altar  quite  instinc- 
tively, as  one  may  suppose.  In  countries  of  southern 
Europe,  the  stranger  visiting  a  cathedral  will  observe  ^^un 
poverOy'^  who,  while  mechanically  repeating  his  prayers  be- 
fore an  image,  has  his  eye  and  his  attentive  consciousness 
fixed  all  the  time  on  "  il  forestierey^^  whom  he  watches, 
waiting  for  an  opportune  moment  to  beg  for  alms. 

Religious  Rites  as  Cyclic  Processes.  —  As  an 
example  of  the  persistence  and  permanence  of  religious 
forms  and  their  cyclic  character,  consider  the  forms  of 
the  rites  of  the  Christian  church  which  are  similar  to 
those  in  use  in  Greek  and  Eastern  mysteries.  Tyler,  in 
his  '* Primitive  Culture,''  gives  instances  from  American 
Indians  and  other  savages  of  the  use  of  prayer,  sacrifice, 
fasting,  lustrations,  etc.  The  spiritual  significance  of 
these  rites  is  to  be  sure  often  greatly  transformed,  in 
accordance  with  the  change  in  the  conception  of  the 
nature  of  God,  as  for  example  in  the  case  of  sacrifice. 

The  rosary  is  an  example  of  the  cyclic  and  mechanical 
in  religion.  The  prayers  of  the  rosary  are  a  kind  of 
magic  defence  against  heresy  and  vice.  This  institution 
is  found  in  Buddhism  and  Mohammedanism  as  well  as 
in  Christianity.  It  consists  of  a  string  of  beads  represent- 
ing, in  Roman  Catholicism,  a  series  of  ''Ave  Marias" 
with  ''Pater  Nosters"  interpolated  after  every  decade. 
Good  Catholics  tell  us  that  there  is  "great  merit"  in  re- 
peating the  rosary  and  that  "  good  "  people  do  it  every  day. 
But  when  the  same  form  of  prayer  is  continually  repeated 
it  tends  to  become  formal  and  mechanical,  a  matter  of 
habit,  an  exercise  supposed  to  have  magic  efficacy. 

The  baptismal  formula  is  originally  of  this  "magical" 
type.  Where  absolute  verbal  accuracy  is  required,  we 
find  such  mechanical  forms  for  acquiring  merit  as  the 
prayer-mill  of  the  Tibetan  Buddhists,  —  which  are  ma- 

N 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  179 

chines  on  wheels  turned  by  wind  or  water,  which  roll  out 
papers  on  which  are  written  the  prayers,  —  sentences  by 
the  million.     The  prayer  formula  is :  — 

"Om  the  Jewel  in  the  Lotus ! 
"Hum!" 

This  sentence  constantly  repeated  is  supposed  by  the 
Tibetan  Buddhist  to  be  a  means  of  enlightenment  and  a 
panacea  for  all  evils. 

A  form  which  an  external  religious  system  often  as- 
sumes is  that  of  the  hierarchy,  i.e.  the  aggregate  of  persons 
having  authority,  arranged  in  a  certain  order.  While 
the  individuals  change,  the  organization  or  form  of  the 
hierarchy  is  permanent ;  and  these  persons  are  thought 
of  as  in  a  sense  sacred  and  of  divine  power  because  of 
their  office  and  entirely  apart  from  the  quality  of  their 
inner  life. 

Religious  Ceremonies  and  Ritual  as  Cyclic  Pro- 
cesses. —  Religious  ceremonies  are  in  themselves  finite 
series,  often  with  a  culmination  point  as  in  the  ceremony 
of  the  Mass  or  as  in  pagan  mysteries.  But  the  Mass  is 
repeated  the  following  Sunday  and  on  each  successive 
Sunday. 

So  in  the  telling  of  the  rosary,  already  mentioned. 
All  the  beads  are  finally  told,  but  at  the  appointed  time 
the  monk  begins  and  goes  through  the  cycle  again,  re- 
peating every  prayer  (term  or  element). 

The  Church  Year.  —  The  motive  here,  I  take  it, 
is  to  repeat  in  the  consciousness  of  the  disciple  or  wor- 
shipper the  spiritual  experience  of  the  Master.  Hence 
we  have  a  finite  experience  beginning  at  Christmas  (or 
formerly,  Epiphany)  whose  climax  is  reached  at  Easter. 
But  the  experience  of  dying  to  live  is  never  completed 
in  the  finite  disciple  or  in  the  religious  community ;  hence 
the  process  must  be  repeated  again  and  again.  Thus 
though  serial  as  to  significance,  the  services  themselves 
of  the  Christian  year  form  a  perpetual  cycle. 


180  THE    DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

The  Rite  of  Confession.  —  And  so,  too,  with  the 
rite  of  Confession.  The  penitent  confesses  all  his  sins 
and  receives  absolution.  But  the  old  temptations  come 
again,  or  new  ones  assail  him  and  he  falls.  Hence  he 
must  confess  and  be  absolved  again  and  yet  again.  Thus 
confession  becomes  a  cyclic  process,  both  in  the  individ- 
ual's own  life,  and  as  a  permanent  institution  of  the 
church. 

In  so  far,  then,  as  based  on  and  interpreting  genuine 
and  universal  human  experience,  religious  institutions, 
like  other  institutions,  become  relatively  permanent  and 
their  method  cyclic. 

Religious  Festivals.  —  We  have  already  seen  that 
Christian  rites  can  be  traced  back  to  primitive  pagan 
institutions.  So,  too,  with  our  church  festivals.  Christ- 
mas and  Easter  were  originally  heathen  festivals,  and  many 
of  the  ancient  customs  connected  with  them  are  still 
practised.  Beside  the  regular  repetition  of  the  festivals 
as  the  years  roll  round,  so  that  each  term  of  the  cyclic 
process  occurs  again,  we  have  often  an  inner  rhythm,  so 
to  speak,  in  the  cycle  itself.  Some  of  our  Christian 
festivals  were  connected  with  the  ancient  sun  worship  and 
were  based  on  the  course  of  the  sun  through  the  heavens. 
Thus  Christmas  marks  the  winter  solstice,  —  ''Dies 
Natalis  Solis  Invicti,"  —  and  our  Christian  customs  reveal 
their  origin  in  pagan  sun-rites,  as,  for  example,  in  the  bring- 
ing in  of  greens  from  the  forest ;  the  burning  of  the  Yule 
log,  and  candles;  games  and  festivities  directed  by  the 
Lord  of  Misrule ;  mince  pies,  plum  pudding,  boar's  head, 
etc.  The  climax  is  reached  at  the  summer  solstice  or 
mid-summer  fire  festival,  when  the  sun  has  reached  the 
height  of  its  course,  a  festival  which  appears  in  Chris- 
tianity as  the  festival  of  St.  John's  Eve. 

A  similar  process  is  met  with  in  the  Greek  harvest  and 
spring  festivals  which  follow  the  process  of  vegetation, 
its  renewal  in  the  spring  and  death  in  the  autumn. 

Now  since  processes,  which  through  repetition  become 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE — ITS   SOURCES  181 

matters  of  habit  which  are  performed  without  conscious 
attention,  are  Hkely  to  be  practised  from  a  beUef  in  their 
having  a  kind  of  magic  efficacy,  these  external  ^'forms'' 
of  religion  come  to  be  thought  of  as  having  value  in  them- 
selves, —  as,  for  example,  in  the  pronouncing  of  a  sacred 
name,  or  as  in  the  rite  of  baptism,  —  by  means  of  which 
the  individual  may  be  saved  without  initiative  or  moral 
struggle  of  his  own.  Christianity  in  this  respect  is  re- 
lated to  those  other  redemptive  religions,  such  as  the 
religion  of  Isis  and  Mithraism.  The  disciple  of  Mithra 
was  to  become  a  new  creature,  to  be  set  free  from  evil 
spirits,  and  '4n  aeternam  renatus.'^  And  so,  too,  through 
the  sacramental  efficacy  of  water  and  the  name,  the 
Christian  disciple  entered  the  kingdom  and  was  in  con- 
sequence released  from  sin.  But  this  efficacy  is  magical 
rather  than  moral.  Thus  religious  value  is  transferred 
from  the  inner  attitude  of  the  self-conscious  spirit  to  the 
outer  formal  practice,  a  practice  which  has  become 
mechanical. 

Cyclic  processes  are  processes  whose  elements  are 
repeated  again  and  again.  Hence  this  side  of  religious  ex- 
perience appears  as  an  absolute  antithesis  to  the  forms 
of  the  spiritual  religious  consciousness  already  con- 
sidered. It  is,  ^.e.,  in  complete  opposition  to  the  mystic 
consciousness  which  abhors  external  forms  and  the 
authority  of  tradition  and  established  routine  —  which 
follows  the  guidance  of  the  inner  light,  the  revelations 
of  individual  experience,  —  and  which  seeks  a  goal  in 
which  all  processes  whatsoever  disappear  in  light,  har- 
mony, and  ecstasy.  Likewise,  is  it  opposed  to  the  ethical 
religious  consciousness  for  which  every  himian  experience 
is  a  new  discipline,  every  act  a  unique  and  novel  element 
in  a  progression  over  stepping  stones  of  dead  selves 
towards  the  infinitely  far-away  goal  of  moral  perfection. 

Looking  back  over  our  analysis  of  the  double  aspect 
of  religious  experience,  we  see  that  these  two  tendencies 
are  in  their  logical  form  as  well  as  in  their  inner  essence 


182  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

opposed,  and  we  may  even  ask  if  they  are  not  contradic- 
tory. How,  for  example,  can  there  be  an  union  of  a 
cyclic  process  with  every  term  repeated,  and  of  a  serial 
process  where  this  is  never  the  case  ?  Or,  again,  how  can 
there  be  harmony  between  the  spiritual  motive  and  the 
worldly  motive?  Can  one  at  once  serve  God  and 
Caesar?     ^'The  letter  killeth ;  the  spirit  alone  gives  life."  ^ 

And  yet  irreconcilable  as  the  two  processes  seem,  it 
is  out  of  the  demands  of  the  religious  spirit  itself  that  the 
external  and  formal  arise.  For  man  believes  that  he 
can  do  something  himself  to  obtain  the  gift  of  the  gods, 
his  Heaven,  Nirvana,  better  state  of  self,  or  whatever 
may  be  the  form  in  which  his  goal  and  ideal  finds  ex- 
pression. In  a  word,  his  aim  is  to  find  a  way  of  life, 
and  the  two  tendencies  have  this  in  common,  that  each 
holds  to  a  way  of  salvation,  though  they  differ  as  to  its 
source.  In  the  recurrent  processes,  the  forms  or  means 
to  salvation  tend  to  become  the  source  and  end,  and  yet 
as  outward  expression  of  the  inner  life  and  a  means  to  its 
preservation,  these  outer  forms  seem  essential  to  religious 
experience. 

Some  form  of  worship,  some  external  expression,  some 
suitable  environment  and  fixed  times  for  recollection  are 
necessary  to  retain  and  develop  the  religious  sentiment 
and  attitude.  Even  the  mystic,  that  extremest  believer 
in  the  inner  light  and  immediate  personal  revelation, 
must  repeat  in  his  trances  the  syllable  '^Om,"  or  fixate 
in  some  way  his  attention  in  order  to  attain  the  bliss  of 
union  with  the  Divine,  to  attain  ^'enlightenment,''  or 
the  '^ unconditioned  consciousness." 

Because  man  is  a  practical  and  social  being  his  inner 
faith  and  the  spiritual  meaning  of  his  life  must  make 

^  Similar  tendencies,  we  may  note  in  passing,  are  found  in  the 
biological  realm,  viz.  in  the  tendency  to  variation  and  the  tendency 
to  conservation  of  the  type ;  and  also  in  psychology  in  the  tendency 
to  social  imitation  and  the  tendency  to  social  opposition,  which  Bald- 
win and  Tarde  have  noted;  in  radicalism  and  conservatism  in  the 
political  field ;  and  in  the  actual  time  process  and  its  measurement. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE — ITS   SOURCES  183 

themselves  visible  in  habit  and  action,  and  must  receive 
the  sanction  of  his  fellows.  As  Professor  Baldwin  has 
shown,  his  own  self-thought  involves  the  thought  of 
others,  till  he  grows  to  have  an  ideal  of  a  public  self,  — 
a  selfhood  which  is  common  to .  all,  —  and  an  ideal  of 
conduct  to  which  all  must  conform.  Out  of  this  senti- 
ment arise  public  religious  institutions  and  formulas, 
laws,  customs,  creeds,  and  social  organizations,  —  forms 
which  attempt  to  embody  once  for  all  the  religious  emo- 
tions and  ideals ;  for  in  religion,  as  elsewhere,  some  stand- 
ard there  must  be,  some  rule  or  law  understood  by  all, 
something  repeated  or  relatively  permanent  which  shall 
control  the  lives  of  individuals.  And  then,  also,  many 
persons  feel  their  inner  religious  experience  heightened 
through  public  worship  with  its  necessary  formal  pro- 
cesses. 

Or,  again,  there  is  the  need  to  find  the  dogma  such  as 
the  mystical  union  of  God  and  man  made  visible  or  tan- 
gible in  sensuous  expression.  Hence  the  ''Holy  Place" 
where  this  union  is  believed  to  take  place;  the  cere- 
monies and  mysteries  like  the  celebration  of  the  Mass; 
images  and  other  symbols  of  the  revelation  of  the  divine. 
Negro  religion  holds  to  the  visible  manifestation  of  the 
Divine  in  the  ''shouting"  at  revivals,  in  the  stamping 
and  frenzy,  the  trance  and  vision  of  the  possessed,  — 
"when  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord  passed  by."  This  exter- 
nal manifestation  is  for  the  negro  communion  with  God. 

Tensions  between  Serial  and  Cyclic  Processes.  — 
But  as  soon  as  the  inner  life  gets  outward  expression  and 
social  acceptance  or  sanction,  it  tends  to  become  a  matter 
of  habit  and  routine,  a  cyclic  process.  Against  such  a 
mechanism  in  religion  there  are  sure  to  be  found  rebeUious 
spirits  —  Protestants  —  who  strive  to  overthrow  the  es- 
tablished institutions,  —  idols  of  the  tribe,  as  they  seem 
to  them,  —  while  the  conservative  spirits  cling  to  the 
old  forms.  The  result  will  be,  as, a  rule,  some  sort  of 
compromise. 


184  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

The  whole  process  of  rehgious  history  illustrates  such 
tensions  and  conflicts,  compromises  or  reconciliations. 
The  prophet  seeks  for  his  ideal  an  expression  unique  and 
spiritual  in  a  series,  each  element  of  which  is  novel,  but 
as  a  social  being  he  needs  the  sanction  of  his  fellowmen, 
and  as  a  moral  religious  being  he  seeks  to  bring  to 
them  his  own  insight,  comfort,  or  whatever  else  his  reli- 
gious experience  has  meant  to  him.  The  vision  of  the 
prophet  becomes  a  ritual,  a  creed,  a  ceremony ;  the  inner 
purity  of  the  heart  is  transformed  into  a  process  of  ex- 
ternal purifications.  It  becomes  a  repeated  process,  — 
cyclic,  —  and  this  cyclic  process  continues  till  some  new 
reformer  appears  with  his  transforming  ideal.  Then  if 
the  old  forms  are  retained  they  become  symbols  merely 
of  a  higher  spiritual  meaning.  The  religious  ideal  and 
conscience  is  thus  continually  rediscovered  by  the  individ- 
ual in  his  own  experience.  It  comes  to  him  in  moments 
of  inspiration  with  a  sense  of  ultimate  certainty  —  but 
the  individual  cannot  live  by  the  inspiration  of  fleeting 
moments.  Some  standard  he  needs  and  some  support 
when  the  vision  has  fled,  the  will  is  paralyzed,  and 

"Life  is  darkened  at  the  core." 

Hence  once  again  the  religious  institutions  and  conven- 
tions, the  cyclic  processes.  Without  these  we  have  the 
type  of  the  poet  Blake,  whose  creed  was  anarchy.  Blake, 
a  believer  in  instinct  and  feeling,  who  held  that  man 
might  ignore  law  and  live  by  inspiration,  like  the  angels, 
*^ beyond  good  and  evil."  Now  anarchy  may  have  a 
sweetness  of  its  own,  but  it  is  an  impossible  creed  for 
social  beings.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  a  criterion  for 
common  action  is  bound  to  develop  external  forms  which 
tend  to  become  cyclic. 

It  is  not  social  motives  alone,  however,  which  lead 
to  the  externalization  of  religious  experience.  In  part 
the  motives  are  aesthetic. 

The  religious  reformer  emphasizes  the  inner,  spiritual 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  185 

attitude  of  the  soul  to  God.  This  attitude  is  essential, 
but  how  shall  it  be  maintained? 

It  sometimes  happens  that  those  who  have  been  brought 
up  from  childhood  in  a  ritualistic  form  of  worship  come 
to  hate  these  forms,  which  seem  mere  vain  repetition, 
and  to  prefer  the  extemporary,  individual  form  of  prayer 
and  a  general  simplicity  of  service  and  surroundings; 
while  those  who  have  attended  congregational  churches 
react  from  the  coldness,  barrenness,  and  lack  of  aesthetic 
quality,  and  find  the  individual  form  crude  and  egotistical, 
and  feel  that  their  own  needs  are  better  expressed  in  those 
forms  which  have  embodied  the  experience  of  the  ages, 
its  love  and  sorrow,  its  aspirations  and  renunciations,  its 
sense  of  sin,  repentance,  need  of  forgiveness,  its  victory 
over  temptation,  its  joy  of  communion. 

In  a  great  mediaeval  cathedral,  for  example  (and  to  a 
lesser  degree  in  other  places  of  worship),  the  '^dim  re- 
ligious light, ^'  the  ^'  long-drawn  aisles,''  the  soaring  vaults ; 
the  burning  colors  of  the  stained  glass  windows;  the 
lighted  candles  before  the  altar ;  the  sacred  music  and 
the  solemn  entrance  and  procession  of  the  priests  and 
choristers,  the  intoning  of  the  rhythmic  phrases  of  the 
litany,  holy  places,  the  solemn  call  to  prayer  —  all  these 
act  as  ^'sensitizers"  and  reminders  to  intensify  the  re- 
ligious consciousness  and  to  keep  it  at  a  high  emotional 
level.  But  such  an  emotional  consciousness  seeks  for 
itself,  as  all  emotion  does,  external  expression.  Hence 
we  have  a  circular  movement.  External  form  heighten- 
ing the  emotion,  and  emotion  embodying  itself  anew  in 
form. 

The  rhythmic  form  appears  to  be  the  natural  spon- 
taneous form  of  expression  for  surplus  emotional  states. 
Thus  Spencer  says:  ''The  undulatory  movement  is 
habitually  generated  by  feeling  in  discharge."  Hence 
those  forms  which  have  accompanied  both  savage  and 
pagan  religious  ceremonies  everywhere;  the  sacred 
dance  and  chant  and  march ;   the  whirling  of  dervishes ; 


186  THE   DEAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

the  dancing  of  maenads;  the  swaying  and  stamping  of 
savages;  the  ^^repetitions''  of  the  revival  meetings, 
—  phenomena  which  when  carried  to  the  extreme  end 
in  the  trance  state.  The  Arab  priest  to-day  sways 
rhythmically  back  and  forth  as  he  chants  the  Koran, 
as  the  boys  also  are  taught  to  do  at  the  University  of 
El-Azar,  in  Cairo.  This  rhj'-thmic  movement  is  a  means 
perhaps  of  concentrating  the  attention  on  spiritual  things. 

Africans  here  in  America  on  the  Sea  Cotton  Islands 
still,  at  their  meetings,  dance  in  a  circle,  all  the  time 
with  more  and  more  excitement,  with  faster  and  faster 
rhythm,  till  finally,  exhausted,  some  drop  out  and  new 
ones  take  their  places. 

But  rhythmic  movement  helps  also  to  make  labor 
easier.  Hence  the  so  frequent  experience  of  singing 
while  at  work.  One  notes  this  particularly  when  travel- 
ling in  Egypt,  where  through  the  long,  warm  day  the 
shardvf  workers  chant  a  monotonous  song  to  the  periodic 
stooping  and  rising  over  their  machines;  and  the  Nile 
boatmen  sing  rhythmically  as  they  row  the  dahabeeyah 
down  the  river. 

But  this  last  instance  suggests  that  rhythmical  ex- 
pression has  also  its  social  ''motif."  As  the  savages 
circle  round  the  sacred  camp-fire  or  altar,  singing  in 
chorus  and  dancing,  they  turn  now  to  right  and  now  to 
left,  they  sway  the  body  back  and  forth,  lift  the  foot 
and  beat  the  ground  to  mark  periods  and  to  keep  the 
group  together,  as  the  baton  of  the  conductor  does  in  a 
modern  orchestra.  The  repetition  and  rhythm  of  the 
litanies  of  the  mediaeval  and  modern  church  seem  to 
express  a  certain  fundamental  tendency  and  need.  The 
priest  recites  the  prayers  and  the  congregation  responds 
in  recurrent  phrases.  Here  we  meet  again  with  that 
blending  of  the  serial  and  the  cyclic  forms  which  is  so 
conamon  in  the  religious  field.  The  individual  prayers 
seeming  to  soar  higher  and  higher  in  spiritual  meaning 
towards  a  climax,  like  the  ascending  notes  of  the  violins 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  187 

in  some  musical  phrase  —  while  the  responses  of  the 
congregation  are  recurrent  repetitions,  i.e.  a  repeated 
or  cyclic  process. 

Further,  we  must  admit  that  man  has  need  of  worship. 
If  he  believes  in  and  seeks  an  ideal  good,  it  is  not  for 
pragmatic  or  utilitarian  reasons  alone.  He  seeks  in 
some  way  to  commune  with,  and  to  unite  himself  to,  the 
Ideal  Life,  his  essential  good.  To  express  feelings  of 
adoration  and  devotion  is  a  natural  accompaniment  of 
this  religious  attitude.  Related,  perhaps,  to  the  impulse 
to  seek  outer  expression  for  inner  thought  and  feeling 
is  that  tendency  of  religion  to  image  for  itself  the  divine 
in  human  form.  Personality  is  man's  highest  concept, 
and  how  otherwise  than  in  terms  of  the  highest  qualities 
of  personality  is  he  able  to  make  real  to  himself  the  divine 
life?  Moreover,  he  feels  the  need  of  a  being  to  whom  he 
can  not  only  pour  out  his  feelings  of  adoration  and  exul- 
tation, of  gratitude  for  blessings  received  or  his  sense  of 
woe,  of  repentance,  of  need  of  forgiveness  and  the  rest, 
—  but  also  of  one  who  will  respond  to  these  his  outpoiu-- 
ings.  The  psalms,  hymns,  and  prayers  of  reUgious 
experience  bear  witness  to  this  perennial  need  of  man 
to  which  we  may  give  the  general  name  of  worship.^ 

In  all  historical  religions  except  in  Buddhism,  I  think, 
we  find  this  tendency  to  personify  the  divine,  and  even 
the  followers  of  the  Buddha  soon  came  to  deify  their 
Master.  Wherever,  as  in  Brahmanism,  the  supremely 
divine  life  seems  too  great  and  infinite  to  be  thought  of 
under  the  limitations  of  the  finite  and  human,  we  have 
the  conception  of  lesser  gods  standing  between  God  and 
man;  or  we  have  hierarchies  of  jinni,  angels,  mediators 
and  saints ;  and  men  who  have  not  been  able  to  believe 
in  God  at  all  have  sometimes  substituted  a  '^rehgion  of 

*The  Hymn  of  Akhnathon  (see  ^'Akhnathon  Pharaoh  of  Egypt," 
by  Weigall,  p.  150)  and  many  of  the  Hebrew  Psalms  are  illustrations 
of  the  outpouring  in  worship  of  the  inner  joy  of  the  heart  which  has 
found  God. 


188  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

humanity/'  or  found  their  religious  ideal  embodied  for 
them  in  some  individual  human  form,  as  in  father,  mother, 
wife,  child,  or  beloved  friend,  and  their  attitude  towards 
these  becomes  in  a  measure  adoration.  Our  poetry  very 
frequently  embodies  this  substitute  for  reUgious  feehng: 

"My  days  are  tuned  to  finer  chords 
And  lit  by  higher  suns, 
Through  all  my  thoughts  and  all  my  words, 
A  purer  purpose  runs. 

"  No  matter  if  my  hands  attain 
The  golden  crown  or  cross, 
Only  to  love  is  such  a  gain 
That  loving  is  not  loss. 

"And  thus  whatever  fate  betide 
Of  rapture  or  of  pain, 
If  storm  or  Sun  the  future  hide, 
My  love  is  not  in  vain."  ^ 

It  is  this  motive  of  finding  the  divine  in  the  human 
which  has  led  to  the  deifying  of  the  seer,  or  teacher,  who 
has  brought  to  society  some  new  divine  message ;  or  of 
some  national  hero,  or  benefactor  of  his  race.  The 
disciples  who  have  lost  their  Master  dwell  on  the  thought 
of  his  personality  and  of  what  his  life  meant  to  them 
when  on  earth,  and  out  of  their  love  and  sorrow  they 
build  up  and  win  for  themselves  the  sense  of  an  abiding 
presence  which  comforts  and  inspires  and  sustains  them 
on  life's  pilgrimage.  That  is,  they  idealize  the  loved 
person  and  his  relations  to  them. 

We  see  clearly  in  the  Pauline  epistles  that  this  is  what 
Paul  did, who  had  not  known  Jesus  in  the  flesh;  and 
many  another  both  before  and  since  has  found  in  this 
ideahzation  of  a  personaUty  the  foundation  of  his  reUgious 
life. 

No  man  hath  seen  God  at  any  time,  but  in  his  mes- 
senger he  has  revealed  himself. 

1  John  Hay. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  189 

J' God  so  loved  the  world  that  He  gave  His  only  begotten  Son." 
"He  that  hath  seen  Him  hath  seen  the  Father." 

This  is  the  word  of  the  Fourth  Gospel;  and  yet  we 
must  acknowledge  that  this  personification  is  in  a  sense 
a  sacrifice  of  the  spiritual  to  the  literal.  The  great  poet 
of  the  Middle  Ages  has  told  us  how  men  have  been  led 
to  the  Divine  and  Eternal  through  first  seeing  the  heavenly 
life  embodied  in  some  loved  human  form.  Yet  we  must 
remember  that  Beatrice  was  already  transformed  into 
an  idealized  personality  when  she  became  Dante^s  guide 
to  the  heavenly  life.  Dante  saw  Paradise  revealed  in 
the  eyes  of  Beatrice,  but  Beatrice  would  not  let  her 
pilgrim  rest  there. 

"  Volgiti  ed  ascolta  che  non  pur  ne  miei  occhi  e  Paradise." 

She  led  him  on,  as  he  was  able  to  bear  it,  through  spheres 
of  increasing  light,  till  his  eyes  came  to  rest  at  last  on  the 
Light  Eternal. 

Calvinists  and  Puritans  have  sometimes  gone  so  far 
as  to  believe  that  the  love  of  their  fellowmen  detracted 
from  the  love  of  God.  So,  too,  Thomas  a  Kempis : 
^'When  thou  settest  thine  eyes  upon  creatures,  the  face 
of  the  Creator  is  withdrawn  from  thee.  How  small 
soever  anything  be,  if  it  be  loved  inordinately  it  holdeth 
us  back  from  the  highest  good  and  corrupteth." 

To  find  the  Ideal  of  Perfection  completely  embodied 
in  any  finite  form,  no  matter  how  wonderful,  is  in  its 
measure  idolatry.  Only  in  an  Absolute  Good  can  perfect 
satisfaction  be  found,  hence  for  finite  religious  experience 
the  endless  quest. 

Yet  embodiment  in  external  form  seems  essential  to 
religion.  ^^Men,"  says  Emerson,  '^as  naturally  make  a 
state  or  a  church  as  caterpillars  a  web.''  Hence  arise 
the  tensions  and  conflicts  in  religion  of  which  we  have 
already  spoken. 

The  problem  of  the  inner  and  the  outer  in  religious 
experience  appears  as  a  form  of  that  wider  problem  of 


190  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

the  relation  of  mind  and  body  of  which  our  time  has  so 
much  to  say.  Modern  psychology  and  medicine  have 
shown  us,  what  indeed  common  sense  had  already  recog- 
nized, the  mutual  relationship  of  these  two ;  and  yet  it 
seems  impossible  to  quite  express  this  relationship  as 
science  would  Uke  to  do  in  terms  of  cause  and  effect. 
For  which  is  cause  of  the  other?  Philosophy  has  in 
turn  emphasized  one  or  the  other  element,  and  has  thus 
given  rise  to  two  opposite  types  of  doctrine,  viz.  to  ideal- 
ism and  to  materialism.  The  first  reduces  all  to  spirit, 
while  the  second  makes  matter  ultimate;  but  neither 
form  of  philosophy  has  quite  succeeded  in  overcoming 
the  opposition  between  the  two  elements.  And  parallel- 
ism, which  aims  to  unite  the  two  conceptions  while  still 
maintaining  their  difference,  does  not  really  succeed  in 
showing  the  connection  between  its  ^'double  aspect, '^  or 
how  the  two  processes  are  really  one.  The  intimate 
relation  and  interdependence  of  mind  and  body  with 
which  our  everyday  experience,  as  well  as  our  science, 
makes  us  familiar,  and  the  world  of  art,  which  exists 
only  as  embodied  in  the  outer,  i.e,  in  matter,  make 
it  plain  that  somehow  these  two  are  really  one.  The 
ultimate  basis  of  their  union,  however,  we  do  not  as  yet 
clearly  see. 

The  most  we  can  say  is  that  our  intents  and  purposes 
in  order  to  become  actual  need  concrete  embodiment. 
For  without  externality  we  return  to  the  mystic  attitude. 
We  have  already  noted  the  subjectivity  of  this  attitude 
and  its  difficulty  for  higher  religions  which  must  be  ethical 
religions. 

And  yet,  —  if  God  is  the  Soul  of  our  souls,  the  Self 
of  ourselves,  what  need  of  external  forms  or  any  sort  of 
mediators?  Why  not  throw  off  all  formahsm  and  ex- 
temaUty,  and  entering  into  the  inner  chamber  of  our 
spirits,  worship  God,  as  the  Master  bade  his  disciples, 
in  spirit  and  in  truth?  Why  not  the  direct  relation 
between  man  and  God  "As  a  friend  draws  near  to  a 


THE   WAY    OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  191 

friend"  as  St.  Augustine  puts  it?  or  as  it  is  expressed  by 
Tennyson :  — 

"Speak  to  Him,  thou,  for  He  hears, 

And  spirit  with  spirit  can  meet  — 

Nearer  is  He  than  breathing, 

And  closer  than  hands  and  feet." 

The  difficulty  is  perhaps  bound  up  with  the  fact  that 
rehgion  is  not  pure  mysticism.  It  is  ethical,  active,  social, 
and,  consequently,  temporal. 

^'If  ye  truly  seek  me,  ye  shall  surely  find  me,"  said 
Jahwe  through  his  prophet. 

Where,  then,  shall  man  come  face  to  face  with  God? 
Not  in  the  inner  spirit  alone,  and  surely  not  only  in  the 
outer  life.  In  religious  history  we  meet  with  various 
attempts  at  reconciliation  of  the  two  tendencies. 

Forms  of  Reconciliation  or  Compromise  between 
THE  Two  Tendencies.  —  When  the  human  spirit  revolts 
against  the  external  authority  and  worldliness  of  estab- 
lished institutions  from  which  the  essential  spirit  of 
rehgion  seems  to  have  departed,  the  form  which  this 
revolt  frequently  assumes,  in  natures  at  once  sensitive 
and  rebellious,  is  that  of  ffight  from  the  world. 

The  Motive  of  Flight  from  the  World.  —  Thus 
in  the  words  of  the  Hebrew  Psalmist :  — 

"0  for  the  wings  of  a  dove  — 
Then  would  I  fiy  away  and  be  at  rest. 
So  then  would  I  wander  far  off, 
I  would  lodge  in  the  wilderness." 

And  again  and  again  in  the  lyrics  of  the  ''Bacchae," 
Euripides  expresses  this  attitude:  — 

"O  feet  of  a  fawn  to  the  green-wood  fled, 
Alone  in  the  grass  and  the  loveliness, 
Leap  of  the  Hunted,  no  more  in  dread." 

Escape  from  the  *  Worship  of  the  Ruthless  Will,"  from 

**  Dreams  of  the  proud  man  making  great 
And  greater  ever 
Things  that  are  not  of  God." 


192  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

In  ancient  Egypt,  two  thousand  years  before  Christ, 
death  itself  was  sometimes  looked  upon  as  a  happy  re- 
lease from  life. 

DEATH  A  GLAD  RELEASE  ^ 

"Death  is  before  me  to-day 
(Like)  the  recovery  of  a  sick  man, 
Like  going  forth  into  a  garden  after  sickness. 

"  Death  is  before  me  to-day 
Like  the  odor  of  myrrh, 
Like  sitting  under  the  sail  on  a  windy  day. 

"  Death  is  before  me  to-day 
Like  the  odor  of  lotus  flowers, 
Like  sitting  on  the  shore  of  drunkenness. 

"  Death  is  before  me  to-day 
Like  the  course  of  the  freshet. 
Like  the  return  of  a  man  from  the  war-galley  to  his  house. 

"  Death  is  before  me  to-day 
Like  the  clearing  of  the  sky. 
Like  a  man  'fowling  therein  toward '  that  which  he  knew  not. 

"  Death  is  before  me  to-day 
As  a  man  longs  to  see  his  house, 
When  he  has  spent  years  in  captivity." 

It  is  not  only  in  the  ancient  or  mediaeval  world  that  this 
motive  of  flight  from  the  world,  in  despair  of  finding  a 
solution  in  the  world,  appears.  The  latest  illustrations 
of  the  abandonment  of  active,  social  life  are  to  be  found 
in  those  two  great  and  otherwise  contrasting  figures  of 
the  close  of  the  last  century,  Count  Leo  Tolstoy  and 
Friedrich  Nietzsche.  The  supreme  instance  of  it  is  the 
monastic  system. 

In  the  early  days  of  Christianity  in  the  decadence  of 
the  Graeco-Roman  religion,  we  meet  with  the  anchoritic 
type,  living  alone  in  cave  or  forest.    Also,  of  course,  in 

1  Quoted  by  Breasted.  P.  175  of  "  Religion  and  Thought  in 
Ancient  Egypt." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  193 

Buddhism  we  find  the  Ufe  of  soHtary  contemplation. 
Flight,  however,  in  itself  is  perhaps  rather  the  abandon- 
ment of  a  solution  of  the  conflict. 

Monasticism.  —  In  the  monastic  system  itself,  we 
have  an  attempted  solution  for  a  comparatively  small 
group.  The  goal  of  the  monk  was  the  ^^Unio  Mystica'* 
by  means  of  the  '^  Vita  Contemplativa  "  and  by  asceticism. 
The  monastery  was  a  kind  of  barrier  against  the  tempta- 
tions of  the  world,  and  through  it  were  adjusted  the 
monk^s  relationship  to  his  fellows,  both  in  the  monastery 
and  without  it.  Monastic  life  is  a  community  life  and 
develops  necessarily  social  regulations,  ceremonies,  set 
times  and  seasons  for  prayer  and  fasting,  —  cyclic  pro- 
cesses, —  in  a  word.  Even  the  Buddhist  monk  who 
forsakes  the  world  because  of  its  hopeless  corruption  and 
misery  founds  an  order  and  seeks  to  draw  others  away 
from  the  world  to  the  community  life  of  the  disciples  of 
Buddha. 

The  ideal  of  Christian  monasticism  was  not  for  the 
mass  of  mankind  retirement  from  the  world,  but  the  laity 
could  be  united  to  the  church,  the  spiritual  whole,  through 
partaking  in  the  rites,  and  by  the  acceptance  of  the 
dogmas. 

Roman  Catholic  Church.  —  The  Roman  Catholic 
church  stands  out  as  another  form  of  compromise  or 
union  of  the  two  tendencies,  —  the  spiritual  and  the 
worldly.  A  whole  of  many  antagonistic  tendencies,  it 
has  been  called  a  ' '  complexio  oppositorum. '  ^  Augustinian 
and  spiritual  it  is  in  its  inner  spirit,  its  sense  of  individual 
sin,  its  need  of  grace ;  its  personal  piety,  worldly,  temporal, 
and  formal  in  its  outer  expression.  It  is  in  its  outer 
hierarchical  form  and  in  its  legal  and  political  tendencies 
a  successor  of  the  Roman  Empire. 

The  history  of  the  Mediaeval  Church  abounds  in  ten- 
sions and  conflicts  between  the  two  tendencies.  To 
give  one  illustration  only,  consider  the  awakened  religious 
spirit  in  St.  Francis  of  Assisi,  which  aimed  to  return  to 


194  THE   DRAMA    OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

the  simpler,  purer  ways  of  early  Christianity,  —  the  effect 
which  his  message  had  for  a  time  on  the  mass  of  the 
people,  the  struggles  with  papal  authority  of  Francis, 
the  final  losing  of  his  cause  when  the  Order  of  Franciscans, 
which  he  had  founded  in  poverty  and  humility,  coming 
more  and  more  under  the  authority  of  the  Pope,  became 
more  organized  and  formal,  and  at  the  same  time  proud, 
luxurious,  and  worldly. 

Another  form  of  adjustment  of  the  inner  to  the  outer 
is  modern  church  work  in  its  various  forms.  This  lays 
stress  on  charity,  on  work  for  social  betterment,  on 
amusement,  on  sound  physical  health,  on  missionary 
enterprises  and  proselyting  as  means  to  the  religious 
life.  But  these  "means,''  repeated  again  and  again, 
tend,  as  all  religious  cyclic  processes  do,  to  become  ends 
in  themselves,  —  and  to  lack  that  which  seems  to  be  the 
essential  spirit  of  religion. 

Still  another  type  of  solution  of  the  conflicting  ten- 
dencies is  the  socialistic  Utopia.  This  type,  though 
especially  prominent  in  modern  times  as  a  result  of  the 
awakened  humanitarian  consciousness,  is,  as  we  know,  as 
old  as  Plato;  and  even  centuries  before  his  day  the 
Hebrew  prophets  had  their  social  programme  for  a  re- 
deemed Israel,  when  (as  in  Isaiah)  justice  and  kindness 
should  be  universal,  the  crooked  should  be  made  straight 
and  the  rough  places  plain,  poverty  and  disease  should 
be  done  away ;  for  then  men  should  buy  and  eat  without 
money  and  without  price,  the  lame  should  leap  as  an 
hart,  and  the  tongue  of  the  dumb  should  sing.  So  in 
pictorial  form,  Isaiah  expresses  that  which  ever  since  in 
more  commonplace  language  seems  to  be  the  Utopian 
solution  of  many  an  one  of  our  modem  reformers. 

Isaiah's  dream  never  came  true.  The  theocratic  ideal 
of  Ezekiel  turned  to  the  legalism  and  formalism  of  the 
post-exilic  Judaism.  The  Puritan  revolted  against  the 
forms  and  externality  of  the  established  religion  with 
its  Popish  munomeries,  —  and  surely  there  was  a  rebirth 


THE   WAY  OF  LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  195 

of  the  spiritual  life  in  the  great  leaders  of  Puritanism, 
such  as  Bunyan  and  Milton,  —  and  yet  in  the  end  or  in 
general,  Puritanism  itself  tended  to  lip-service,  to  literal- 
ism, and  a  mechanical  religion. 

The  spiritual  Kingdom  of  God,  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
how  has  it  been  fulfilled  in  mediaeval  or  modern  church  and 
state?  The  latest  attempt  to  carry  it  out  is  the  modem 
Christian  socialist's  plan  for  the  reorganization  of  society. 
Will  it  fulfil  this  Christian  vision  of  a  kingdom  of  love? 

Socialism.  —  The  fundamental  proposition  of  socialism 
is  equal  opportunity  for  all.  So  far  all  is  well.  But 
socialism  seems  to  me  rather  to  emphasize  external  and 
material  good  than  the  things  of  the  spirit.  It  therefore 
attempts  to  do  through  laws  and  government  what  is  rather 
a  matter  of  the  disciplined  and  regenerated  inner  spirit. 

Why  is  it  that  the  stories  of  the  regenerated  socialistic 
world  always  give  one  a  sense  of  boredom? 

It  is,  I  believe,  because  this  form  of  reconciliation  is 
not  other-worldly.  It  is  to  be  carried  out  here  and  now. 
Such  is,  generally  speaking,  the  ideal  of  modern  life  with 
its  emphasis  on  richness  of  life  and  on  practical  efficiency. 
Instead  of  the  old  dualism,  which  we  find  in  the  two  cities 
of  St.  Augustine,^  the  spiritual  life  is  to  find  its  true  em- 
bodiment in  the  present  earthly  life.  The  fundamental 
note  in  William  Morris's  scheme  is  delight  in  the  natural 
life  of  man  and  in  the  expression  of  simple  kindliness, 
combined  with  joy  in  handiwork.  All  these  Utopian 
schemes,  doing  away  to  a  great  extent,  as  they  do,  with 
pain  and  sorrow  and  conflict,  leave  one  with  a  sense  of 
dissatisfaction  and  shallowness.  For  not  here,  not  here 
in  present,  earthly  things,  is  the  goal  of  life.  The  social- 
istic world,  which  has  apparently  attained  perfection, 
seems  therefore  stagnant  and  dull,  without  incentive, 
romance,  or  spiritual  inspiration. 

^  "Two  loves  made  these  two  cities :  Love  of  self  even  to  despising 
God,  made  the  earthly  city ;  Love  of  God  even  to  despising  self,  made 
the  heavenly."     Civ.  Dei,  XIV,  28. 


196  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

"Man  has  to  live  a  life  beyond, 
Have  a  hope  to  die  with  dim-descried." 

A  perfect,  finite  world  is  a  contradiction.  Given  human 
nature  as  it  really  is,  we  may  doubt  whether  such  a  re- 
constructed whole  as  socialism  proposes  could  ever  be 
permanent.  Only  the  moment  can  be  complete  and 
perfect  —  but  the  moment  itself  is  only  a  fragment  in 
an  infinite  whole.  In  the  socialistic  Utopia  new  conflicts 
and  tensions  would  necessarily  inunediately  arise,  and 
the  whole  religious-social  movement  continue,  if  on  some- 
what altered  lines. 

Thus,  again,  no  finite  external  religious-social  order 
can  be  perfect,  and  on  the  other  hand  the  inner  religious 
spirit  must  seek  outward  expression. 

No  form  of  reconciliation  or  compromise  between  the 
two  elements  of  our  opposition  seems  entirely  satisfactory. 
None  of  them  completely  embodies  the  significance  of 
the  inner  religious  life. 

Must  we  say,  then,  with  Ibsen^s  priest  Brand,  that 
'^all  compromise  is  the  work  of  the  devil"? 

But  man's  spiritual  life  must  be  adapted  to  the  earthly 
conditions  in  which  he  necessarily  lives.  Brand  himself 
is  an  instance  of  what  happens  when  there  is  no  attempt 
at  reconciliation  of  the  inner  and  the  outer.  Brand's 
creed  of  ^'all  or  nothing"  leads  to  no  goal,  only  to  the 
solitary  ice  church  on  the  barren  mountain  peak. 

Thus,  once  again,  no  finite,  external  religious  order 
perfectly  embodies  the  inner  religious  life,  and  on  the 
other  hand  the  inner  spirit  must  seek  outward  expression. 

Summary 

We  feel  that  what  really  constitutes  religious  experience 
is  not  outer  form  and  observance,  but  inner  spirit.  Not 
with  tithes  of  mint,  anise,  and  cummin ;  not  with  the 
keeping  of  fasts;  the  repeating  of  prayers;  the  taking 
part  in  ceremonies;    not  in  church-going  is  the  essence 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  197 

of  religion  to  be  found.  This  is  true  in  our  own  time 
just  as  it  was  in  the  time  of  Jesus,  and  of  the  prophets. 
And  yet,  we  are  driven  to  ask,  is  it  possible  to  have  the 
inner  without  the  outer? 

The  Modern  Spirit  of  Restlessness.  —  It  sometimes 
seems  in  our  day  as  if  we  were  given  over  to  a  new  pagan- 
ism. A  restless  craving  has  seized  upon  the  heart  of  the 
rising  generation.  The  youth  of  the  present  day  rushes 
hither  and  thither  in  search  of  more  life,  of  an  ever  wider 
and  wider  experience.  Trained  and  equipped,  as  in 
some  respects  these  young  people  are  as  never  before, 
they  feel  efficient,  and  ready  for  all  that  life  has  to  offer. 
They  rush  to  seize  it  with  outstretched  hands;  nothing 
must  escape  them.  So  eager  are  they  that  it  sometimes 
seems  as  if  they  mistook  mere  restless  activity  for  ^4ife.'' 
They  hurry  from  one  experience  to  another.  They 
drink  fuller  and  fuller  draughts  of  the  exciting  cup  of  life. 
There  is  not  time  for  meditation  and  prayer,  for  the  slow 
sinking  in  of  experience,  for  the  brooding  spirit  which 
brings  wisdom  and  understanding,  gentleness  and 
humility.  Hence,  in  spite  of  their  practical  efficiency 
and  their  eagerness  to  serve,  one  sometimes  feels  a  cer- 
tain superficiality,  a  lack  of  steadiness  and  quiet  strength, 
the  absence  of  an  unifying,  controlling  purpose  in  their 
lives,  —  a  lack  (shall  we  say  it  ?)  of  real  self-consecration. 

But  it  is  the  older  generation  which  is  to  blame.  Having 
lost  the  vividness  and  depth  of  conviction  of  the  faith  of 
its  fathers,  it  has  not  known  what  to  give  to  its  children. 

Biological  science,  sociology,  and  political  economy  have 
taken  the  place  of  religion.  Evolution  and  energy,  effi- 
ciency and  humanism  (a  kind  of  socialized  naturalism)  and 
progress  are  the  words  of  the  day.  The  more  thoughtful 
among  us,  not  quite  content  with  this  attitude,  are  begin- 
ning to  substitute  for  God  and  the  other-worldliness  of 
the  religious  life  'Hhe  social  consciousness,"  and  devotion 
to  the  public  good  of  the  actual  present.  But  this  notion 
of  a  public  self  or  community  whole  is  a  difficult  con- 


198  THE    DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

ception  to  bring  home  to  the  mind  of  the  child  or  very- 
young  person ;  and,  further,  it  is  doubtful  if  it  is  a  wholly- 
adequate  conception.  For  the  social  group,  too,  is  in  a 
sense  a  Umited  and  finite  and  ever-changing  experience. 
Yet  if  we  do  not  give  to  the  child  the  conception  of  some- 
thing higher  than  himself,  or  of  something  more  unified 
and  permanent  than  mere  experience  as  it  passes,  there 
is  doubt  whether  he  will  get  it  at  all  in  later  years ;  not 
at  least  till  he  has  been  tried  in  the  fire  of  experience  and 
suffering  in  which  many  an  one  will  go  to  pieces. 

Let  me  try  to  make  clear  the  contrast  of  the  religious 
attitude  with  this  attitude  of  our  day  by  a  simple  illus- 
tration from  a  field  with  which  I  have  some  acquaintance. 
In  the  well-regulated  kindergarten,  the  kindergartner 
tries  to  bring  home  to  the  little  child  in  unconscious 
ways  the  sense  of  a  law  which  is  above  teacher  and  child 
alike,  and  which  alike  they  must  obey.  One  feels  that 
the  child  does  absorb  from  the  atmosphere  of  the  kinder- 
garten some  vague  notion  of  this  impersonal  law,  but  for 
him  it  must  be  mostly  embodied  in  the  higher  personali- 
ties of  his  milieu,  in  father,  mother,  or  teacher.  The 
child  naturally  personifies,  and  it  comes  to  be  fairly  easy 
for  him,  gradually  as  he  develops,  to  find  this  law  of  his 
whole  social  group  finally  embodied  in  the  being  of  God. 
So  the  youth  rises  to  the  conception  of  the  Highest  and 
Holiest,  the  wholly  Just  and  Loving,  whom  he  not  only 
obeys,  but  to  whose  service  he  freely  and  gladly  conse- 
crates his  powers  and  his  life. 

Now  we  may  agree  that  the  highest  outward  manifesta- 
tion of  the  inner  religious  spirit  is  in  righteousness  of 
character  and  personal  conduct,  and  in  devoted  service 
of  the  community,  but  the  question  still  remains  whether 
some  outward  form  and  observance,  some  times  for 
meditation  and  prayer,  for  the  uplift  of  the  soul  of  man 
to  the  Highest  that  he  knows,  are  not  necessary  to  foster 
and  maintain  this  religious  consecrated  attitude.  There 
are  perhaps  a  few  rare  spirits  who  are  an  exception. 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  199 

There  are  those  who  are  able  to  meet  their  own  needs 
from  then*  own  imaginative  or  reflective  life,  whom  no 
forms  J  as  they  actually  exist,  can  satisfy.  These  persons, 
I  think,  are  however  exceptions. 

The  experience  of  the  inner  religious  life  is  unique. 
The  mystic  himself  acknowledges  that  his  experience  is 
incommunicable,  and  not  verifiable  by  others.  It  is 
ineffable,  but  it  is  also  fleeting,  and  the  absolutely  desired 
goal  is  beyond.  And  out  of  this  fleeting  character  of 
our  time  experience,  our  own  individual  isolation  and 
sense  of  the  imperfection  of  our  experience,  comes  the 
need  for  expression,  for  communication,  for  united  action, 
and  for  some  permanent  and  abiding  value.  Thus  arise 
the  external  and  cyclic  processes,  the  more  or  less  perma- 
nent forms,  aesthetic  and  social,  of  religious  rites  and 
institutions  which  we  have  considered.  But  when  every 
experience  is  thus  embodied  in  a  cyclic  form  it  seems 
a-s  if  there  were  really  nothing  new  under  the  sun.  What 
has  been  will  be.  The  passions,  joys,  and  griefs  of  men, 
«ven  their  aspirations  and  ideals,  which  seem  to  them  so 
unique  and  novel,  are  but  instances  of  the  same  old 
process.  The  well-established  forms  tend  then  to  be- 
come meaningless  or  expressive  only  of  dead  ideals.  The 
individual  conscience,  with  its  hunger  and  thirst  for 
righteousness,  for  freedom  of  thought  and  for  creativeness, 
revolts  against  the  conservatism  which  would  crush  out 
all  life  and  progress.  Again,  the  cyclic  form  reestablishes 
itself  with  somewhat  altered  inner  significance  —  and  again 
and  yet  again  the  movement  is  repeated.  No  adjustment 
of  the  inner  to  the  outer  therefore  seems  complete  in  a 
temporal  world.  It  is  like  trjdng  to  measure  the  in- 
stantaneous velocity  of  a  moving  object,  for  at  zero 
velocity  the  terms  disappear.  So  the  process  sweeps 
on,  the  conflict  finding  solution  only  in  the  moment 
which  comes  but  to  vanish. 

Of  course  if  these  two  tendencies  are  not  parts  of  one 
whole,  then  there  is  no  conflict  and  no  problem.     The 


200  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

inner  and  spiritual  may  be  religion,  and  the  external, 
cyclic  process  may  be  politics,  commercialism,  or  some- 
thing else,  just  as  an  element  in  a  series  might  touch  a 
circle  at  one  point;  or  as  two  apparently  contradictory 
propositions  need  not  necessarily  conflict.  The  problem 
needing  a  solution  arises  only  when  the  two  tendencies 
are  claimed  as  parts  of  one  whole. 

We  might  solve  the  problem  by  saying  that  one  pro- 
cess is  appearance,  the  other  reality.  The  serial  process 
is  religious  experience  in  reality;  the  cycle  is  but  the 
appearance.  The  individual  progresses,  even  though 
the  external  forms  remain  the  same.  Or,  again,  the 
progress  of  the  serial  process  is  but  appearance;  in 
reality  there  is  only  the  cyclic  repetition.  The  problem 
then  would  be :  Can  parallel  aspects  constitute  one 
whole?  But  if  we  make  the  cyclic  or  external,  the  real, 
the  serial  and  inner  appearance,  then  we  have  a  process 
which  reducing  to  mere  repetition  lacks  ethical  signifi- 
cance and  value  and  can  hardly  constitute  religion  in 
any  spiritual  sense.  On  the  other  hand,  it  seems  hardly 
possible  to  reduce  the  cyclic  and  external  to  mere  ap- 
pearance since  the  inner  life  itself  requires  expression, 
and  because  the  individual  is  also  social.  Because,  in 
short,  religion  has  its  social  side. 

But  if  each  tendency  claims  to  be  a  genuine  and  vital 
religious  experience,  —  and  this  they  do  as  we  have  seen, 

—  then,  if  parts  of  one  whole,  the  two  tendencies  are 
contrary  and  conflicting.  Wherever  we  have  the  inner 
religious  spirit  and  at  the  same  time  social  (community) 
life,  there  we  seem  invariably  to  find  outer  forms,  ritual, 
and  institutions,  and  this  is  so  because  man  has  a  sen- 
sational, aesthetic,  and  social  consciousness.  Even  in 
the  case  of  the  individual  alone,  some  environment  and 
atmosphere  seem  necessary  to  foster  the  religious  spirit 

—  (even  silent  communion  in  solitude  is  a  form). 

We  have  considered  the  result  of  the  conflicts  and  ten- 
sions, the  revolts,  reformations,  readjustments  and  recur- 


THE    WAY    OF   LIFE — ITS    SOURCES  201 

Fences,  as  they  appear  in  history  in  the  lives  of  individuals 
and  nations.  Logically  all  we  can  say  is  that  the  adjust- 
ment of  the  cycle  to  the  series,  or  of  outer  to  inner,  — 
the  result  of  the  synthesis  of  the  two  tendencies,  is  a 
process  of  the  spiral  type,  a  perpetual  readjustment  of 
the  cyclic  to  the  serial. 

At  the  close  of  a  long  discussion  this  does  not  seem  to 
be  saying  very  much.  We  want  to  know  why  it  is  so, 
i.e.  the  logical  ground  for  it.  Of  course  we  can  say  that 
man's  need  for  communication  with  his  fellows  and  co- 
operative action  lead  inevitably  to  organized  religion; 
and  that  the  law  of  habit  tends  to  make  religious  forms 
and  institutions  relatively  permanent  and  cyclic;  or, 
again,  that  a  class  of  exorcisers,  medicine  men  and  priests, 
for  the  glory  of  their  cause  or  for  their  own  glory,  seek 
power  and  control  over  other  men  and  so  establish  in- 
stitutions with  their  forms,  which  shall  be  more  enduring 
than  any  individual  life,  and  which  shall  represent  on 
earth  the  spiritual  community. 

Or,  we  may  say  that  the  life  of  a  frail  and  finite  creature 
requires  discipline  and  a  suitable  environment,  i.e.  '*  scaf- 
foldings" and  ^^sensitizers"  in  religion,  as  well  as  in  other 
fields.  Hence  the  repeated  forms  of  religious  observance, 
the  discipline  of  meditation  and  prayer,  the  setting  apart 
of  holy  places  and  holy  days  for  "  recollection."  In  the 
words  of  a  prayer :  — 

"To  recover  the  pure  wisdom  of  a  Christian  mind,  we  are  called 
to  this  day  of  remembrance  and  this  house  of  prayer." 

And,  further,  we  can  say  that  because  of  our  physical 
constitution,  our  fluctuating  attention  and  liability  to 
fatigue  in  aesthetic  appreciation,  rhythmic  processes,  — 
alternations  of  activity  and  repose  are  developed  to 
heighten  and  prolong  the  aesthetic-religious  experience. 
But  these  notions  are  psychological.  Conflicts  and  ten- 
sions are  also  psychological  affairs.  The  difficulty  is  that 
the  logical  world  is  static  while  the  actual  and  concrete 


202  THE   DRAMA    OF   THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

is  in  perpetual  flux.  It  is  like  the  difiiculty  about  the 
relative  value  of  part  and  whole.  Logically  each  re- 
quires the  other.  There  seems  to  be  no  meaning  in 
speaking  of  a  whole  without  parts  or  of  parts  without 
the  whole ;  hence,  logically  one  is  no  more  valuable  than 
the  other. 

But  if  the  inner  life  needs  the  outer,  we  must  not  forget 
that  equally  the  outer  needs  the  inner.  No  socialistic 
programme  can  initiate  or  regenerate  and  perfect  the 
world  apart  from  the  regeneration  in  the  inner  life  of 
every  individual  in  the  community.  And  no  external 
perfecting  of  the  environment  —  as  for  example  through 
the  elimination  of  poverty  —  is  sufficient  to  secure  this 
rebirth  of  the  spirit,  ''/n  ceternam  renatus^^  depends 
ultimately  on  an  individual  decision  of  the  will. 

The  repetition  of  creeds  and  dogmas  is  a  process  which 
is  cyclic,  but  therein  is  expressed  once  for  all  a  statement 
about  events  which  are  supposed  to  have  happened  (or 
which  will  in  the  future)  once  upon  a  time  in  the  world's 
history,  i.e,  events  of  inner  significance ;  and  in  the  same 
way  our  ceremonies,  our  festivals  and  holy  days  com- 
memorate striking  and  unique  occurrences.  Thus  here 
the  cyclic  and  the  serial,  the  outer  and  the  inner,  are 
interwoven.  Professor  Santayana  ^  suggests  interestingly, 
how  the  nature  worship  of  the  Vedic  hymns  —  a  wor- 
ship based  on  recurrent  natural,  external  processes  — 
developed  in  the  Greek  Olympian  age  into  a  religion 
which  was  dramatic,  humanized,  and  morally  significant. 
But  moral  and  dramatic  processes  are  serial. 

Suggestion  of  Solution.  —  May  it  not  be  that  the 
drama  of  the  fall  and  redemption,  that  judgment  days, 
incarnations  of  the  divine  in  the  human,  atonements, 
resurrections  and  the  rest,  are  not  events  which  happened 
once  in  a  cosmological  or  historical  process,  but  rather 
infinitely  recurrent  processes  or  events,  and  therefore 
cyclic  as  in  our  external  religious  forms  we  make  them  ? 

1  George  Santayana,  "Life  of  Reason." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  203 

And  yet  equally  in  the  life  of  each  individual  (or  nation) 
may  the  judgment  day  or  the  day  of  atonement  or  of 
rebirth  be  a  unique  event,  a  crisis  and  miracle  in  the 
drama  of  his  lifers  story,  where  no  term  is  ever  exactly 
repeated,  since  were  it  repeated  it  would  lose  for  him  its 
ethical  significance  and  value.  The  ethical  process  is 
serial  and  dramatic  with  a  limit  or  climax  as  its  goal. 
But  the  process  as  a  whole  would  be  mirrored  in  some 
or  all  of  its  parts,  i.e,  it  would  be  a  rhythmic  process. 

It  may  be  that  the  cycUc,  mechanical  processes  do 
symbolize  or  embody  some  such  fundamental  meanings ; 
yet  in  detail  they  may  need  constant  revising  and  readjust- 
ment to  the  deepening  insight  of  individuals  and  to  the 
growing  enlightenment  of  the  commimity,  with  respect  to 
the  spiritual  interpretation  of  the  meanings  themselves. 

For  whatsoever  forms  we  retain  they  must  not  become 
mechanical,  but  must  be  vested  with  the  life  of  the  spirit, 
—  that  is,  they  must  be  symbols  and  ministers  of  grace. 
As  symbols  adequate  and  not  fanciful,  nor  such  as  to 
absorb  attention  in  themselves  as  ends,  i.e.  as  having  in 
themselves  magic  efficacy.  They  should  be  means  to 
lead  the  religious  spirit  to  higher  levels  of  spiritual  attain- 
ment, and  as  symbols  intimate  revealers  of  the  life  within. 

To  Swedenborg  the  body  was  an  expansion  or  process 
of  the  soul.     To  Paul  it  was  the  temple  of  the  living  God. 

To  the  prophets  and  psalmists  of  Israel,  the  whole 
earth  was  a  vesture  of  divinity. 

"The  heavens  declare  the  glory  of  God, 
And  the  firmament  sheweth  his  handywork. 
Day  unto  day  uttereth  speech, 
And  night  unto  night  sheweth  knowledge."  ^ 

The  religion  of  the  Sufis,  influenced  by  Neo-Platonic 
doctrine,  looked  upon  the  outer  world  as  an  emanation 
or  a  mirror  of  God,  the  '^ Beloved'^  and  '^AU  Beautiful." 

^  Psalm  19.  Compare  the  coming  of  the  day  of  the  Lord  in  Isaiah 
35. 


204  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

The   English   poet,    Spenser,    expresses   the   intimate 
relation  of  inner  and  outer  thus :  — 

"For  every  spirit  as  it  is  more  pure 
And  hath  in  it  the  more  of  heavenlie  light, 
So  it  the  fairer  body  doth  procure  to  habit  it. 

For  of  the  soul  the  body  form  doth  take 
For  soul  is  form  and  doth  the  body  make." 

And  thus  Emerson  :  — 

"Onward  and  on,  the  eternal  Pan, 
Who  layeth  the  world's  incessant  plan, 
Halteth  never  in  one  shape, 
But  forever  doth  escape. 
Like  wax  in  flame  into  new  forms, 
Oxygen,  and  air,  of  plants,  and  worms. 
The  world  is  the  ring  of  his  spells. 
And  the  play  of  his  miracles. 

**As  the  bee  through  the  garden  ranges. 
From  world  to  world  the  godhead  changes, 
As  the  sheep  go  feeding  in  the  waste. 
From  form  to  form  he  maketh  haste ; 
This  vault  which  glows  immense  with  light 
Is  the  inn  where  he  lodges  for  the  night. 
What  recks  such  traveller  if  the  bowers 
Which  bloom  and  fade  like  meadow  flowers, 
A  bunch  of  fragrant  lilies  be, 
Or  the  stars  of  eternity? 

"  Thou  meetest  him  by  centuries, 
And  lo !  he  passes  like  the  breeze ; 
Thou  seek'st  in  globe  and  galaxy. 
He  hides  in  pure  transparency ; 
Thou  askest  in  fountains  and  in  fires,  — 
He  is  the  essence  that  inquires. 
He  is  the  axis  of  the  star. 
He  is  the  sparkle  of  the  spar, 
He  is  the  heart  of  every  creature. 
He  is  the  meaning  of  each  feature ; 
And  his  mind  is  the  sky. 
Than  all  it  holds  more  deep,  more  high."  * 

1  Mayday. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   SOURCES  205 

Shall  we  in  some  "hereafter/^  whereas  we  now  see 
through  a  glass  darkly,  —  through  external  forms  and 
mediators,  —  then  see  face  to  face  and  ^'know"  un- 
mediately  even  as  we  are  known?  That  question  can 
only  be  answered  by  another.  Will  man  then  become 
another  type  of  being? 

Christianity,  like  other  religions,  has  emphasized  the 
distinction  between  two  worlds,  —  'Hhis  world  and  the 
next,"  ^^this  world  and  a  ^beyond'  or  invisible  world,"  — 
and  the  distinction  between  a  temporal  and  an  eternal 
order. 

This  is  the  significance  of  the  fact  of  the  ideahty  of 
religious  experience,  which  we  noted  at  the  outset. 

Now  if  this  '^beyond"  of  the  religious  consciousness, 
if  this  ideal  and  '^ ought"  of  the  ethical  consciousness  is 
to  be  significant  and  operative  in  our  present  life,  then, 
indeed,  outward  form  is  needed,  just  as  it  is  in  the  world 
of  art  or  of  practical  life,  to  bring  the  ideal  out  of  the  inner 
world  of  dreams,  to  give  it  concreteness  and  definiteness, 
and  so  to  make  real  to  the  average  man  the  invisible 
world. 

It  is  a  work  for  the  creative  imagination  to  paint  in 
appropriate  colors  this  ideal  world,  to  sing  of  it  in  fitting 
language;   in  short  so  to  ^'body  forth" 

**  The  forms  of  things  unknown." 

that  these  inward  ideals  shall  become  the  master-forces 
in  human  life,  and  thereby  transform  it  wholly  into  the 
life  of  the  Spirit. 

Could  this  be  attained,  could  the  religious  ideal  be 
wholly  experienced  in  this  world, 

"And  the  whole  world  give  back  the  song 
Which  once  the  angels  sang," 

then,  indeed,  should  we  find  a  complete  union  of  the 
outer  and  the  inner,  and  our  problem  would  at  last  be 
solved. 


"I  saw  eternity  the  other  night, 
Like  a  great  ring  of  pure  and  endless  light, 

All  calm,  as  it  was  bright ; 
And  round  beneath  it,  time,  in  hours,  days,  years, 

Driv'n  by  the  spheres 
Like  a  vast  shadow  mov'd,  in  which  the  world 

And  all  her  train  were  hurl'd. 

"Yet  some,  who  all  this  while  did  weep  and  sing. 
And  sing  and  weep,  soar'd  up  into  the  ring ; 

But  most  would  use  no  wing. 
*0  fools,'  said  I,  Hhus  to  prefer  dark  night 

Before  true  light ! 
To  live  in  grots  and  caves,  and  hate  the  day 

Because  it  shews  the  way, 
The  way,  which,  from  this  dead  and  dark  abode, 

Leads  up  to  God ; 
A  way  where  you  might  tread  the  sun,  and  be 

More  bright  than  he ! '  " 

—  From  Henry  Vaughan's  poem,  "The  World." 


CHAPTER  Y 
The  Way  of  Life  —  Its  Forms 

Part  I 

In  the  preceding  chapter,  we  considered  the  source 
of  that  element  of  reUgious  experience  which  we  have  called 
the  process,  the  Way  of  Life,  or  —  as  many  have  called 
it  —  the  way  of  salvation.  ('^What  shall  I  do  to  be 
saved  ?  "  "  This  do  and  thou  shalt  live.")  Already  in 
the  chapter  before  the  last,  we  had  found  that  this  ex- 
perience is  as  to  its  nature  both  mystical  and  practical, 
both  social  and  individual ;  and  in  our  last  chapter,  we 
found  that  the  source,  also,  of  this  experience  may  be  de- 
scribed either  as  aesthetic  feeling  or  as  ethical  activity ;  that 
is,  that  it  may  be  found  alike  in  individual  experience 
and  in  social  experience.  Man  is  saved  by  grace,  yes, 
but  also  by  his  individual  effort  and  merit.  Further,  we 
saw  (in  the  second  part  of  Chapter  IV)  that  the  source 
of  religious  experience  is  to  be  found  in  the  inner  life  of 
the  individual,  and  is  manifested  in  the  outer  forms  and 
embodiment  of  religious  ideas  and  feeling  such  as  the  es- 
tablished institutions  of  religion  and  the  accustomed  acts 
of  worship ;  or,  also  again  through  the  social  experience  of 
his  relation  to  other  inspiring  personalities.  In  the  words 
of  Browning's  Pompilia :  — 

"Through  such  souls  alone 
God's  stooping  shows  sufficient  of  His  light 
For  us  i'  the  dark  to  rise  by." 

How  all  these  different  and  opposing  characters  could 
be  true  at  once  both  as  to  the  nature  and  as  to  the  source 
of  that  whole  which  we  call  religious  experience,  we  could 

207 


208  THE    DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

not  clearly  see.  To  assert  it  to  be  true  seemed  to  be  to 
assert  contradictory  propositions,  but  at  the  close  of  the 
discussion  in  relation  to  the  inner  and  the  outer,  light 
began  to  dawn. 

In  the  present  chapter,  we  shall  consider  the  forms 
in  which  religious  experience  presents  itself  and  I  shall 
hope  to  show  before  the  chapter  closes  how  the  con- 
flicting elements  of  religious  experience,  which  in  our 
investigation  we  have  discovered,  may  be  united  and 
the  oppositions  (so  far  as  in  finite  life  they  can  be) 
overcome. 

The  way  of  life  appears  under  various  forms.  We  shall 
consider  these  as  follows :. — 

I.  The  Temporal  and  the  Eternal. 
II.  The  Dynamic  and  the  Static. 

III.  The  Many  and  the  One. 

Already,  in  our  study  of  the  nature  and  of  the  source 
of  the  religious  life,  we  have  met  with  these  forms  of 
religious  experience.  The  antithesis  between  the  tem- 
poral and  the  eternal  appeared  in  our  discussion  of  the 
ethical  and  the  mystical  consciousness.  The  antithesis 
between  the  dynamic  and  the  static  appeared  in  the 
same  section,  and  also  in  the  discussion  of  the  opposition 
between  the  inner  and  the  outer.  The  opposition  be- 
tween the  one  and  the  many,  —  another  form  of  the  fore- 
going antithetical  types  of  experience,  —  we  have  not  as 
yet  specifically  noted. 

I 

The  Temporal  and  the  Eternal 

A  striking  and  essential  characteristic  of  human  life 
is  its  transitoriness  and  mutability ;  that  is,  the  pervasive- 
ness of  the  time-consciowsness.  Philosophers  have  called 
time  the  form  of  our  consciousness.  On  all  experience 
it  lays  its  **  unimaginable  touch."  Time  is  a  whole  made 
up  of  three  indivisible  parts  —  past,  present,  and  future 
—  whose  characteristic  is  that  it  is  fleeting.     The  ^^Now,'' 


1 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS    FORMS  209 

the  elusive  present,  the  point,  so  to  speak,  of  our  immediate 
consciousness,  we  can  never  grasp  or  retain.  When  we 
reflect  upon  it  even,  it  has  already  vanished.  To  elude 
time,  as  it  were,  we  arbitrarily  group  together  moments 
into  hours,  days,  weeks,  and  call  them  the  present ;  but 
this  '^ present,"  too,  is  fleeting. 

"The  Bird  of  time  flies  fast,  and  hark ! 
I  hear  the  flutter  of  her  wings." 

Time  is  a  whole  of  never-returning  moments.  ^'You 
cannot  step  twice  into  the  same  stream." 

It  is  this  time-character  of  our  consciousness  which 
gives  to  our  experience  so  much  of  its  tragic  aspect ;  for 
while  it  is  true,  that  alike  of  joy  or  sorrow  — 

"  The  path  of  its  existence  still  is  free  " 

the  fact  of  mutability  and  transitoriness  seems  to  be  more 
striking  with  regard  to  all  that  man  holds  dearest  and 
fairest.  The  springtime,  with  its  sunshine,  birds  and 
blossoms  passes;  flowers  perish;  beauty  fades;  youth 
vanishes;  remembrance  dies;  friendship  grows  cold; 
love  has  wings;   death  puts  an  end  to  all. 

Bound  up  with  change  is  the  character  of  irreversi- 
bility. The  moment  fraught  with  import  and  oppor- 
tunity not  grasped,  is  lost  forever ;  the  deed  done  cannot 
be  undone;  the  word  spoken  cannot  be  recalled.  Poet 
and  sage,  in  East  and  West,  have  sung  of,  and  reflected 
on,  this  mutable  and  transitory  character  of  all  things 
human  and  natural. 

"The  heavens  shall  wax  old  as  a  garment.  As  a  vesture  shall 
thou  change  them  and  they  shall  be  changed." 

"As  for  man,  his  days  are  as  grass  and  as  a  flower  of  the  field  so  he 
flourisheth.  For  the  wind  passes  over  it  and  it  is  gone;  and  the 
place  thereof  shall  know  it  no  more." 

"We  are  as  clouds  that  veil  the  midnight  moon; 
How  restlessly  they  speed,  and  gleam  and  quiver, 
Streaking  the  darkness  radiantly !    Yet  soon 
Night  closes  round  and  they  are  lost  forever." 
p 


210  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

A  further  character  involved,  so  at  first  it  seems,  in 
this  transitoriness  of  our  experience,  is  the  meaningless- 
ness  of  it  all.     What  is  this  our  life  but 

"A  bubble  on  a  river, 
One  moment  here,  then  gone  forever." 

"The  flower  that  smiles  to-day- 
To-morrow  dies ; 

All  that  we  wish  to  stay 
Tempts  and  then  flies. 

What  is  this  world's  delight? 

Lightning  that  mocks  the  night, 
Brief  even  as  bright." 

Yet  deep  in  the  heart  of  man  is  a  need,  a  longing  for 
significance  and  permanence;  and  in  various  ways  he 
has  tried  to  overcome  the  transitory  character  of  his 
experience.  The  concepts  of  science,  the  permanence 
and  unchangeableness  of  natural  law,  seem  to  be  an 
attempt  in  one  particular  form  of  experience  to  overcome 
the  changing,  and  to  harness  mutability  itself  to  the  car 
of  our  practical  needs.  What  is  the  motive  to  art,  but 
an  impulse  to  give  permanence  to  our  experience  ?  That 
is  we  seek  to  give  lasting  expression  to  the  fleeting  mood  of 
sorrow  or  of  dehght,  to  recapture  and  make  enduring 
some  heroic  or  self-sacrificing  deed,  some  lost  felicity  or 
vision  of  beauty?  So  Keats  sings  in  the  ''Ode  to  the 
Grecian  Urn"  ;  so  Shakespeare  in  his-  Sonnets  sang  of  the 
youth  whom  he  adored. 

Philosophers  are  supposed  to  report  only  the  facts  and 
to  interpret  them  without  personal  bias.  Yet  in  their 
theories  on  time  and  the  logic  of  its  necessity,  something 
of  human  interest,  and  desire  to  escape  from  the  tragic 
fact  of  mutability  seems  to  enter.  So  some  of  them  have 
counselled  to  cheat  time  by  giving  one's  self  up  to  drain- 
ing the  dregs  of  the  cup  of  the  sensuous  present. 

"A  book  of  Verse  beneath  the  Bough, 
A  jug  of  Wine,  a  Loaf  of  Bread  —  and  Thou 


THE  WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  .   211 

Beside  me  singing  in  the  Wilderness, 
O  Wilderness  were  Paradise  enow ! " 

Or  in  a  finer  type  of  Epicureanism  there  is  the  attempt  to 
seize  the  flying  moment  and  render  it  eternal  after  the 
fashion  of  Marius  the  Epicurean/  one  ''whose  aim  had 
ever  been  to  use  life  not  as  the  means  to  some  problematic 
end,  but  as  far  as  might  be,  from  dying  hour  to  dying  hour 
as  end  in  itself/'  Positivism  emphasized  the  value  of 
the  stream  of  Time  itself.  The  restless  life  of  our  own 
day  is  perhaps  another  form  of  this  same  motive.  In 
hurrjdng  after  flying  experience,  it  attempts  to  grasp  the 
fulness  of  all  that  life  holds.  Other  philosophers  have 
sought  to  attain  to  a  timeless  attitude,  an  attitude  so 
concentrated  on  meaning  and  purpose  that  Time,  with  its 
losses  and  changes,  is  of  no  account.  Platonic  philoso- 
phy sought  to  transcend  the  flux  of  phenomena  through 
the  notion  of  thought,  grasping  the  eternal  order  of  the 
universe.  The  dreams  of  another  world,  of  a  new  Jerusa- 
lem —  Heaven  —  the  longing  and  hope  of  immortality, 
are  other  forms  of  the  impulse  in  man  to  overcome  the 
changeful,  fleeting  character  of  his  existence.  For  the 
bitterest  aspect  of  the  transitoriness  of  experience  is  its 
meaninglessness ;  for,  for  all  its  change  and  variety, 
life,  after  all,  seems  to  be  naught  but  endless  recur- 
rence ;  the  same  old  tasks,  the  same  old  aims,  the  same 
old  stories  endlessly  repeated.  The  moment  so  fair  not 
only  does  not  last,*  but  if  it  did,  what  then  ?  Even  a 
chain  of  such  moments  is  not  only  soon  fled,  but  the  mo- 
ments are  without  permanent  significance.  They  go  and 
leave  not  a  wrack  of  meaning  behind.  Death  sooner  or 
later  ends  all,  and  standing  by  the  grave  of  one  beloved, 
it  is  not  alone  the  anguish  of  personal  loss  which  over- 
comes the  heart,  nor  is  it  the  irrevocability  of  the  past, 
but  the  sense  of  meaninglessness,  —  that  a  life  so  full  of 
promise  and  beauty  should  ''sink  below  the  verge,''  with 
so  many  hopes  and  ideals  unfulfilled. 

1  Walter  Pater. 


212  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

"Ah  what  avails  the  sceptred  race! 
Ah  what  the  form  divine ! 
What  every  virtue,  every  grace ! 
Rose  Aylmer  all  were  thine." 

Especially  in  religious  experience  have  men  tried  to  find 
a  realm  of  changelessness.  In  Hindu  and  Hebrew  ex- 
perience the  Supreme  Being  is  the  Unchanging,  the 
^^Rock  of  Ages,"  the  Refuge  from  the  storms  of  life,  the 
goal  of  human  striving,  everlasting  blessedness,  rest, 
peace,  the  Eternal.  This  new  life  above  struggle,  change 
and  multiplicity  was  to  be  found  in  flight  from  the  world. 
Already  in  the  preceding  chapter,  we  noted  how  the 
religious  consciousness,  weary  of  the  life  of  the  world  with 
its  pettinesses,  its  agonizing  changes,  its  seeming  irration- 
ality, loves  to  take  refuge  in  flight  to  some  sanctuary  of 
the  inner  life  to  some  ^^  still  desert  of  the  Godhead,"  or 
else  to  some  outer  place  of  refuge  where  peace  and  per- 
manence abide. 

"One  thing  have  I  desired  of  the  Lord,  that  will  I  seek  after;  that 
I  may  dwell  in  the  house  of  the  Lord  all  the  days  of  my  life,  to  behold 
the  beauty  of  the  Lord  and  to  enquire  in  His  temple."     (Ps.  27.) 

This  was  the  spiritual  motive  of  monasticism.  The 
outer  forms,  institutions,  and  customs  of  religion  have 
been  possibly  another  attempt  to  escape  from  Time,  the 
world-destroyer,  by  building  up  a  world  of  permanent 
and  imchanging  values. 

Buddhism.  —  In  the  religions  of  the  East,  the  value 
of  the  eternal  aspect  of  our  opposition  is  strongly  em- 
phasized. An  overwhelming  consciousness  of  the  per- 
petual flux  of  existence  seems  to  have  been  the  starting 
point  of  Buddhistic  rehgious  experience. 

The  Buddhist  reasoned  somewhat  as  follows  :  — 
The   Three  Characteristics  op  Being.^  —  I.  The 
constituents  of  being  are  transitory,  hence  subject  to 

*  This  account  of  Buddhism  is  based  on  Henry  C.  Warren's  "Bud- 
dhism in  Translation." 


i 


1 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  213 

decay,  old  age,  death;  hence  the  constituents  of  being 
are  misery.  Further,  because  of  this  transitory  charac- 
ter of  being,  there  is  no  significance,  no  **somewhatness," 
no  permanence,  no  Ego  to  be  found  in  existence. 

II.  There  are  the  facts  of  flux,  change,  rebirth,  and 
these  are  evil.  Then  the  contradictory  of  these,  not- 
birth,  changelessness,  non-existence,  nothingness.  Nir- 
vana, will  be  good. 

III.  Is  there  any  escape  from  the  misery  of  existence 
to  'Hhe  incomparable  security  of  a  Nirvana  free  from 
birth  and  its  accompaniment  of  old  age,  disease,  death 
and  sorrow?'^  This  was  the  problem  which  the  Buddha 
Gotama  set  to  himself. 

"In  secret  then  I  sat  me  down, 
And  thus  to  ponder  I  began : 
What  misery  to  be  born  again ! 
And  have  the  flesh  dissolve  at  death ! 

"  Subject  to  birth,  old  age,  disease, 
Extinction  will  I  seek  to  find, 
Where  no  decay  is  ever  known,  , 

Nor  death,  but  all  security. 

"  There  is,  there  must  be,  an  escape ! 
Impossible  there  should  not  be ! 
I'll  make  the  search  and  find  the  way, 
Which  from  existence  shall  release ! 

"  Even  as,  although  there  misery  is, 
Yet  happiness  is  also  found ; 
So,  though  indeed  existence  is, 
A  non-existence  should  be  sought. 

"  Even  as,  although  there  may  be  heat, 
Yet  grateful  cold  is  also  found ; 
So,  though  the  threefold  fire  exists, 
Likewise  Nirvana  should  be  sought. 

"  Even  as,  although  there  evil  is, 
That  which  is  good  is  also  found ; 
So,  though  'tis  true  that  birth  exists, 
That  which  is  not  birth  should  be  sought." 

("Story  of  Sumedha  from  the  Jataka.") 


214  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Having  himself  attained  to  enlightenment  (Buddhaship) 
by  means  of  the  Ten  Perfections,  the  aim  of  Gotama  be- 
comes a  practical  and  social  one  —  that  is,  to  teach  to  the 
world  the  way  of  escape  from  the  wheel  of  existence  with 
its  accompanying  misery.  This  escape  is  possible,  for 
existence  is  of  dependent  origination.  This  is  the  insight 
to  which  the  Buddha  attained  after  experiencing  the  bliss 
of  emancipation  for  seven  days  together  at  the  foot  of 
the  '' Bo-tree.'' 

"On  Ignorance  depends  Karma,  etc. ; 

On  Karma  depends  consciousness ; 

On  consciousness  depends  name  and  form ; 

On  name  and  form  depend  the  six  organs  of  sense ; 

On  the  six  organs  of  sense  depends  contact ; 

On  contact  depends  sensation  ; 

On  sensation  depends  desire ; 

On  desire  depends  attachment ; 

On  attachment  depends  existence ; 

^On  existence  depends  birth  ; 

On  birth  depend  old  age  and  death,  sorrow,  lamentation,  misery,  grief, 
and  despair." 
"  Thus  does  this  entire  aggregation  of  misery  arise." 

The  Elements  of  Being  have  Causes.  — There  is 
the  fact  then  of  change,  and  also  the  law  of  cause  and 
effect.  But  whatever  has  a  cause  also  ceases  to  be. 
Hence  in  the  complete  fading  out  and  cessation  of  ig- 
norance ceases  Karma,  and  with  it  the  whole  chain  of 
consequences  of  old  age,  death,  misery,  and  despair. 
Whosoever  has  attained  to  this  insight  and  put  it  in  prac- 
tice in  his  own  life,  he  has  attained  to  ''the  sorrowless 
state.'' 

The  Way  of  Escape  or  of  Salvation.  —  Thus  the 
two  sources  of  being  appear  to  be  ignorance  and  desire. 
Buddha  teaches  the  way  of  escape,  called  variously,  the 
Way  of  Conversion,  the  Path  of  Purity,  Way  of  Sancti- 
fi cation.  Way  of  Salvation. 

Concentration  is  an  Intentness  of  Meritorious 
Thoughts.  —  The  first  step  is  through  overcoming  ig- 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  215 

norance.  Through  concentration  and  meditation  the 
disciple  enters  upon  the  series  of  trances  with  their  vari- 
ous characteristics,  until  he  attains  the  mental  reflex  and 
acquires  insight  into  the  fact  of  the  dependent  origination 
of  existence  and  the  fact  that  there  is  no  ego.  ''I  am" 
is  a  mere  figment,  "a  mode  of  expression,"  there  is  only 
'^name  and  form."  One  who  has  attained  to  this  insight 
sees  things  as  they  really  are ;  and  seeing  the  emptiness 
of  existence  and  the  objects  of  sense,  he  begins  to  feel  an 
aversion  for  them  and  a  cessation  of  desire  for  them. 

But  now,  although  there  is  no  ego,  there  is  something 
called  Karma, ^  whose  definition  appears  to  be  ''deeds," 
but  it  is  difficult  to  make  out  if  Karma  really  represents  a 
motor  element,  for  it  also  appears  to  mean  an  embodi- 
ment of  the  principle  of  cause  and  effect,  and  is  perhaps 
best  translated  as  character,  as  the  result  of  past  deeds. 
Thus  a  man's  Karma  at  any  given  time  is  the  result  of 
his  acts  in  a  former  existence. 

"His  good  deeds  and  his  wickedness  — 
Whate'er  a  mortal  does  while  here, 
'Tis  this  that  he  can  call  his  own, 
This  with  him  take  as  he  goes  hence ; 
This  is  what  follows  after  him, 
And  like  a  shadow  ne'er  departs." 

Merit.  —  If  his  deeds  are  good  deeds,  he  will  attain 
to  a  higher  grade  of  existence  at  the  next  metempsychosis, 
but  while  there  remains  in  him  any  attachment  to  any 
object  whatsoever,  he  shall  not  cease  to  be  reborn. 

"From  Karma,  then,  rebirth  doth  spring 
And  thus  the  world  rolls  on  and  on." 

''  Fires  of  Infatuation,  Hatred,  Covetousness."  — 
It  is  not  sufficient,  then,  for  the  escape  from  misery  and 
sorrow  to  the  ''sorrow-less  state"  to  have  reached  insight 
into  "dependent  origination"  or  the  chain  of  causes  of 
existence,  for  deeds  remain.     Now  these  deeds  (or  Karma, 

*  See  Warren's  "Buddhism  in  Translation." 


216  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

which  is  fruitful  Karma)  arise  through  motives  of  covet- 
ousness,  infatuation,  or  hatred.  The  disciple  then  must 
perform  ''barren  Karma,"  or  in  other  words  must  free 
himself  from  all  desire,  must  make  the  great  retirement 
and  renunciation  as  the  Buddha  did.  When  such  an  one 
has  abandoned  'Hhe  household  for  the  houseless  life,''  has 
renounced  father  and  mother,  wife  and  child,  wealth  and 
social  position  and  all  other  objects  of  ambition  and  de- 
sire, and  has  retired  to  the  forest  and  adopted  the  mendi- 
cant life,  ''then  he  is  aware  that  he  is  free,  he  knows  that 
rebirth  is  exhausted,  that  he  has  lived  the  holy  life,  that 
he  has  done  what  it  behooved  him  to  do  and  that  he  is  no 
more  for  this  world"  (Maha-Vagga).  In  a  word,  misery 
has  ceased  and  he  is  ready  for  Nirvana. 

Enlightenment  and  renunciation  constitute  the  genuine 
realities.     In  this  system  there  is  no  self. 

"Misery  only  doth  exist,  none  miserable. 
No  doer  is  there,  naught  save  the  deed  is  found. 
Nirvana  is,  but  not  the  man  who  seeks  it. 
The  Path  exists  but  not  the  traveller  on  it." 

Through  enlightenment  and  renunciation  the  disciple 
of  Buddha  overcomes  earthly  existence,  mortality,  and 
rebirth ;  in  short,  the  whole  temporal  process ;  and  he  is 
now  able  to  live  the  eternal  Ufe,  i.e,  he  is  ready  for  Nir- 
vana.    And  what  is  Nirvana? 

Meaning  of  Nirvana.  —  As  to  the  meaning  of  Nir- 
vana there  seems  to  be  three  possible  points  of  view :  — 

1.  Nirvana  is  annihilation.  This  is  the  view  of  Nirvana 
taken  by  the  "Encyclopaedia  Britannica"  and  a  number  of 
Oriental  authorities  are  cited ;  and,  in  truth,  this  would 
appear  to  be  the  logical  meaning  for  the  good  sought, 
since  it  is  to  be  escape  from  misery,  and  all  existence  is 
miserable. 

"And  then  do  name  and  form  both  cease, 
And  utter  nothingness  become. 
And  then  when  consciousness  hath  ceased, 
This  all  hath  turned  to  nothingness." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  217 

2.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  much  m  the  translations 
from  Buddhistic  writings  which  leads  one  to  think  of 
Nirvana  as  a  state  of  mind  resembling  to  some  extent,  as 
already  observed,  that  of  the  Stoics,  a  state  which  may  be 
attained  in  this  life. 

A  State  of  Mind  Enlightened,  Calm  and  Passion- 
less, CALLED  '^The  Colorless  Life.'^  —  The  priest  who 
has  reached  a  state  of  insight  into  dependent  origination 
and  who  knows  that  there  is  no  Ego,  ^*he  ceases  to  attach 
himself  to  anything  in  this  world,  and  being  free  from 
attachment  he  is  never  agitated,  and  being  never  agitated 
he  attains  to  Nirvana  in  his  own  person,  and  he  knows 
that  rebirth  is  exhausted,  that  he  has  lived  the  holy  life, 
that  he  has  done  what  it  behooved  him  to  do  and  that  he 
is  no  more  for  this  world /^     (From  Maha-Nidana-Sutta.) 

"  A  mind  unshaken  by  anguish  or  passion  and  secure,  this  is  the 
greatest  blessing."     (Pali  text.) 

*'0f  the  priest  who  has  entered  on  the  cessation  of  per- 
ception and  sensation,  bodily  Karma  has  ceased  and 
become  quieted,  vocal  karma  has  ceased  and  become 
quieted,  mental  karma  has  ceased  and  become  quieted, 
but  vitality  has  not  become  exhausted,  natural  heat  has 
not  subsided,  and  the  senses  have  not  broken  up/'  .  .  . 

*^0n  account  of  the  non-existence  of  any  positive  reality 
it  cannot  be  said  either  that  it  is  conditioned  or  uncon^ 
ditioned,  and  either  that  it  is  worldly  or  that  it  is  tran- 
scendent/' Inasmuch,  however,  as  it  can  be  entered 
upon,  therefore  it  is  correct  to  say  that  it  is  brought  about, 
not  that  it  is  not  brought  about/' 

**  Whereas  the  wise  who  cultivate 
The  wisdom  which  doth  make  a  saint 
Are  they  who  reach  this  holy  trance  — 
This  trance  by  saints  at  all  times  prized, 
And  ever  by  them  held  to  be 
Nirvana  in  the  present  life  — 
Therefore  the  faculty  to  reach 
This  state  of  trance  which  is  conferred 


218  THE    DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

By  wisdom  in  the  holy  paths 

A  blessing  of  those  paths  is  called." 

According  to  Warren,  in  relation  to  the  mental  groups 
of  sensations,  perceptions,  and  consciousness.  Nirvana 
can  be  attained  in  this  life,  because  some  of  these  mental 
states  are  not  subject  to  depravity,  while  this  is  not  the 
case  with  the  /orm-group. 

3.  On  the  whole.  Nirvana,  whether  it  should  be  inter- 
preted as  extinction  simply,  or  as  an  abode  of  bliss,  ap- 
pears in  its  completeness  to  be  a  world  beyond  our  present 
existence,  reached  by  conduct  and  by  the  trances  of  con- 
centration and  wisdom,  to  which  world  the  fifth  trance 
(the  trance  of  cessation)  approaches  the  nearest.  Pos- 
sibly by  studying  a  little  the  steps  of  approach  (the 
trances)  of  the  monk  ^*who  is  no  more  for  this  world"  we 
shall  get  some  insight  into  the  real  nature  of  the  Nirvana- 
experience. 

The  Series  of  Trances.  —  The  basis  of  good  conduct 
(gentleness,  self-restraint,  and  brotherly  love  to  all)  being 
presupposed,  the  would-be  disciple  who  has  renounced  the 
world  and  its  ambitions  and  retired  to  the  solitude  of  the 
forest,  now  enters  upon  the  disciplines  of  concentration 
and  of  wisdom,  or  the  five  trances.  The  first  trance  is 
produced  by  isolation.  The  voice  has  ceased  but  reason 
and  reflection  are  still  active.  It  is  characterized  by 
joy  and  happiness.  The  disciple  attains  to  insight  into 
the  constituents  of  being,  their  transitoriness,  emptiness, 
and  misery.  He  contemplates  the  constituents  of  being 
with  an  insight  ^'not  very  full,  nor  yet  very  keen,"  and 
thereupon  enters  the  second  trance.  This  trance  comes 
about  through  concentration  and  is  ^^an  intense  tran- 
quillization  and  intentness  of  the  thoughts."  Reflection 
and  reasoning  have  ceased  and  happiness  remains. 

In  the  third  trance  happiness  fades  somewhat ;  the 
state  is  rather  one  of  indifference  and  of  contemplation. 

In  the  fourth  trance,  happiness  and  misery  are  alike 
abandoned.     It  is  ''contemplation  as  refined  by  indiffer- 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE ITS   FORMS  219 

ence."  The  priest  enters  the  realm  of  the  infinity  of 
space,  the  infinity  of  consciousness,  the  realm  of  nothing- 
ness, the  realm  of  neither  perception  nor  yet  non-percep- 
tion, and  finally  reaches  the  fifth  trance,  the  trance  of 
cessation  of  perception  and  sensation,  where  he  is  quite 
out  of  reach  of  Mara,  has  thrown  off  the  burden  of  exist- 
ence and  is  ready  to  enter  Nirvana. 

In  this  accoimt  of  the  trances  or  path  to  Nirvana,  there 
seems  to  be  a  gradual  dying  out  of  all  mental  and  physical 
processes  such  as  sensation  and  perception.  Nirvana  is 
the  step  just  beyond ;  it  would  therefore  appear  to  be  the 
realm  of  complete  unconsciousness  and  annihilation.  It 
is  described,  however,  as  beyond  the  realm  of  ^^  nothing- 
ness,^' and  when  perception  and  sensation  have  ceased,  it 
is  said  before  the  clear  vision  of  wisdom  all  depravity 
wastes  away.  At  the  same  time,  then,  that  there  is  a 
fading  out,  an  extinction  of  all  perceptions  and  desires, 
there  seems  to  be  a  deepening  of  the  inner  light  to  intens- 
est  concentration,  and  yet  it  is  said  that  those  who  dwell 
in  cessation  ^'lose  all  thought"  and  that  there  is  ^^noiv 
existence  of  any  positive  reality."  On  the  whole,  I  do 
not  see  that  a  consideration  of  the  approach  to  Nirvana 
helps  very  much  to  the  understanding  of  the  experience. 
Nirvana  is  the  limit  to  the  series  of  trances,  but  it  does 
not  follow  that  it  shares  the  character  of  the  trances  them- 
selves.^ 

1  In  the  new  mathematical  logic  there  are  two  propositions  con- 
cerning "limits"  :  1st,  the  limit  to  a  given  series  is  the  point  beyond 
which  the  series  does  not  extend,  while  beyond  any  given  element  of 
the  series  there  is  always  another  element  belonging  to  the  series. 
2d,  the  limit  may  or  may  not  partake  of  the  character  of  the  series, 
e.g.  let  /S  be  a  series,  and  the  terms  a,  a',  a"  etc.,  and  X  the  limit :  — 

S 


Now  what  is  true  for  every  member  of  the  series  is  not  necessarily  true 
for  the  limit  itself.  If  there  were  a  last  whole  number  or  an  infinitesi- 
mal quantity,  the  limit  would  belong  to  the  series ;  but  in  such  cases 
as  the  measurement  of  quantities,  the  limit  cannot  be  reached, 'and  if 


220  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Let  US  turn,  then,  in  order  to  find  its  meaning  to  the 
descriptions  or  definitions  of  Nirvana  which  are  given 
in  the  Buddhistic  writings.  We  shall  find  that  this 
meaning  is  expressed  almost  entirely  in  negative  terms. 

(a)  Nirvana  is  renunciation.  ^^It  is  the  complete 
forcing  out  and  cessation  of  desire,  a  giving  up,  a  losing 
hold,  a  relinquishment.^' 

(6)  Nirvana  is  emptiness.  It  is  freedom  from  rebirth 
and  misery  of  all  kinds,  as  such  the  ^'sorrowless  state'* 
a  state  of  ^^incomparable  security. '*  (*^  Digha-Ni-Kaya,'' 
P-16.) 

(c)  Nirvana  is  a  passive  state.  It  is  without  attach- 
ment, without  Karma.  A  cessation  of  hatred  and  in- 
fatuation and  of  deeds  good  or  bad. 

(d)  Questions  concerning  existence  do  not  apply  to  it, 
for  consciousness  has  been  uprooted  like  a  palmyra  tree. 
("  Digha-Ni-Kaya,''  p.  16.) 

What  is  left?  In  positive  terms  Nirvana  is  sometimes 
described  as  the  ''abode  of  peace,"  or  a  state  of  bliss; 
but  this  peace,  this  bliss,  are  again  defined  in  terms  of 
negation  or  passivity.  Peace  is  quiescence,  indifference. 
Bliss  is  exemption  from  the  sorrows  of  existence  and 
desire. 

"The  five  groups  form  the  heavy  load, 
And  man  this  heavy  load  doth  bear ; 
This  load  'tis  misery  to  take  up, 
The  laying  down  thereof  is  bliss. 

"  He  who  this  heavy  load  lays  down, 
Nor  any  other  taketh  up, 
By  extirpating  all  desire 
Shall  hunger  lose,  Nirvana  gain." 

attained  would  vanish  in  an  absurdity  like  zero  velocity  of  a  moving 
point. 

But  in  the  example  of  the  halving  fractions  between  zero  and  unity, 
the  second  grade  of  infinite  as  a  limit  to  the  straight  infinite,  or  the 
circle  as  the  limit  to  a  series  of  polygons,  we  have  a  different  type  of 
limit.  And  here,  what  is  true  of  the  series,  does  not  hold  for  the  limit 
of  the  series. 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  221 

Nirvana  as  Wisdom.  —  Nirvana  is  not  this,  not  this 

—  it  is  that  which  is  the  contrast  and  opposition  of  all 
these  things.  That  which  is  perhaps  most  positive  about 
it  is  enlightenment,  i.e.  the  vision  of  the  truth  (the  four 
noble  truths  —  truth  concerning  misery,  origin  of  misery, 
cessation  of  misery,  path  leading  to  cessation  of  misery) 
although  this  wisdom  really  belongs  to  the  stage  preceding 
Nirvana  itself.  According  to  Oldenberg  ^  after  a  struggle 
through  successive  rebirths,  the  wisdom  of  the  '^knowl- 
edge of  salvation  comes  in  one  incomparable  instant  of 
time."  ''Such  an  one  'has  obtained  salvation  and  beheld 
it  face  to  face.*" 

Nirvana-consciousness  is  like  unto  a  state  of  mind 
absolutely  peaceful  and  quiescent,  with  perfect  control  over 
the  senses  and  the  moods  of  the  mind ;  in  short,  a  state  in 
which  all  personal  desires  and  ambitions  have  ceased.  One 
who  has  attained  to  this  state  is  gentle  and  compassionate 
towards  all,  because  he  knows  the  manifold  sorrows  of  the 
world  —  "the  tears  of  things."  His  only  aim  is  to  help 
his  brethren  to  win  insight,  self-mastery,  self-renunciation 
and  the  consequent  peace.  Such  an  one  seems  always  a 
little  sad,  but  from  the  Nirvana-consciousness,  we  are  told, 
all  misery  has  passed  away.  Nirvana  is  like  the  con- 
sciousness of  one  returning  to  a  state  of  convalescence 
after  a  serious  illness,  or  like  a  state  of  redemption  from 
sin;  when  the  weariness,  pain,  fever,  longing,  remorse, 
and  regrets  are  stilled, 

"When  passion's  trance  is  overpassed  " 
a  lethe-like  forgetfulness  steals  over  the  mind,  or  a  sense 
of  physical  ease  and  the  gradual  renewing  of  lifers  forces 

—  a  quiescent  state. 

"Who  conquers  that  despicable  thirst  which  it  is  difficult  to  escape 
in  this  world  —  that  thirst  which  leads  from  one  rebirth  to  another 
rebirth  —  from  him  all  suffering  drops  like  drops  of  water  from  the 
lotus  flower."  ^ 

^  Oldenberg,  "Buddhism." 

2  Quoted  by  Oldenberg.     Compare  with  this  the  restoring  effect  of 


222  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

As  far  as  we  can  make  out,  the  meaning  of  Nirvana- 
experience  vibrates  between  unconsciousness  and  an 
experience  of  perfection  in  terms  of  blissful  quiescence  or 
indifference, 

"Since  indifference  is  bliss, 
And  happiness  is  likewise  called." 

("Visuddi-Magga") 

It  is,  however,  the  goal  of  all  the  strivings  in  the  series  of 
the  disciplines  of  concentration  and  wisdom.  It  is  the 
limit  of  the  series  of  trances,  yet  it  differs  from  nothing- 
ness, for  beside  it  this  earthly  life  with  all  its  stars  and 
milky  ways  is,  as  Schopenhauer,  its  modern  interpreter, 
has  expressed  it,  nothing.  We  are  driven  to  take  refuge 
in  Goethe's  description  of  beatitude :  — 

"Das  Unzulangliche 
Hier  wird's  Ereignisz ; 
Das  Unbeschreieliche 
Hier  ist  es  gethan." 

For  the  rest,  questions  about  existence  and  conscious- 
ness do  not  apply  to  Nirvana,  and  the  law  of  causality 
which  governs  finite  existence  has  here  no  reality. 

\yhen  all  alternatives  concerning  being  are  exhausted, 
there  is  no  answer.  That  is,  it  is  not  true  to  say  the  saint 
is  reborn  or  not  reborn ;  nor  that  he  is  both  reborn  and 
not  reborn ;  nor  that  he  is  neither  reborn  nor  not  reborn, 
for  the  question  is  not  appositive,  so  there  is  no  ground  to 
make  one  either  affirm  or  deny.  Such  questions,  the 
Buddha  held,  do  not  conduce  to  holiness ;  hence  the  in- 
variable answer  is  —  ^^The  Perfect  One  has  not  revealed 
it."  (This  was  the  reply  of  Buddha  to  Vaccha,  the 
wandering  ascetic,  concerning  the  future  existence  of  the 
saint.) 

time  and  the  influence  of  nature  on  Faust  (Part  II,  Act  I,  Sc.  1)  and 
also  Dante,  Inferno  XVI : 

!*Let^  vedrai,  ma  fuer  di  questa  fossa 
La  ove  vanno  I'anime  or  lavarsi  — 
Quando  la  colpa  penuta  e  rimossa." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  223 

After  all  is  said,  the  main  concern  is  ethical,  which 
brings  Nirvana  back  very  nearly  to  that  enlightened 
state  of  mind  which  has  renounced  the  world  and  every 
form  of  desire  and  ambition,  which  has  therefore  over- 
come the  sorrows  of  mutability  and  of  the  insatiability 
of  the  will. 

"That  moment  of  the  earthly  life  of  the  Tathagata,  when  he  has 
attained  the  status  of  sinlessness  and  pamlessness,  this  is  the  true 
Nirvana."  ^ 

How  does  this  state  differ  from  the  sub  specie  oeternitatis 
of  Spinoza,  or  from  the  timeless  world  of  values  of  some 
modern  thinkers?  But  to  attain  to  perfect  sainthood  in 
this  life  is  for  most  men  an  impossibility,  and  in  truth  a 
contradiction  from  an  ethical  standpoint.  And  yet  it  is 
through  an  individual  act  that  individuality  destroys 
itself,  and  the  impression  one  gets  is  of  a  very  intense,  as 
well  as  ethical,  individuality  which  recalls  Stoicism  in  its 
attitude  of  self-restraint  and  serene  self-control  of  taking 
counsel  with  itself  and  in  its  indifference  to  events.^  Along 
with  the  resemblance,  however,  there  runs  a  subtle 
contrast  — 

"The  man  whose  mind,  like  to  a  rock, 

Unmoved  stands,  and  shaketh  not ; 

Which  no  delights  can  e'er  inflame, 

Or  provocations  rouse  to  wrath  — 

O,  whence  can  trouble  come  to  him, 

Who  thus  hath  nobly  trained  his  mind?" 

(Translated  from  the  "Udana.") 

Let  us  compare  the  foregoing  with  the  thoughts  of 
Marcus  Aurelius  Antonius  :  — 

"Men  seek  retreats  for  themselves,  houses  in  the  country,  sear 
shores,  and  mountains ;  and  thou  art  wont  to  desire  such  things  very 
much.  But  this  is  altogether  a  mark  of  the  most  common  sort  of 
men,  for  it  is  in  thy  power  whenever  thou  shalt  choose  to  retire  into 
thyself.     For  nowhere  either  with  more  quiet  or  more  freedom  from 

1  See  Oldenberg's  "Buddha." 

2  Compare,  e.g.,  "Buddha  under  the  Bo-tree." 


224  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

trouble  does  a  man  retire  than  into  his  own  soul,  particularly  when 
he  has  within  him  such  thoughts  that,  by  looking  into  them,  he  is 
immediately  in  perfect  tranquillity ;  and  I  affirm  that  tranquillity  is 
nothing  else  than  the  good  ordering  of  the  mind.  Constantly,  then, 
give  to  thyself  this  retreat,  and  renew  thyself ;  and  let  thy  principles 
be  brief  and  fundamental,  which,  as  soon  as  thou  shalt  recur  to  them, 
will  be  sufficient  to  cleanse  the  soul  completely,  and  to  send  thee  back 
free  from  all  discontent  with  the  things  to  which  thou  returnest. 

"This,  then,  remains:  Remember  to  retire  into  this  little  territory 
of  thine  own,  and  above  all,  do  not  distract  or  strain  thyself,  but  be 
free,  and  look  at  things  as  a  man,  as  a  human  being,  as  a  citizen,  as  a 
mortal.  But  among  the  things  readiest  to  thy  hand  to  which  thou 
shalt  turn,  let  there  be  these,  which  are  two.  One  is  that  things  do 
not  touch  the  soul,  for  they  are  external  and  remain  immoveable ;  but 
our  perturbations  come  only  from  the  opinion  which  is  within.  The 
other  is,  that  all  these  things  which  thou  seest,  change  immediately 
and  will  no  longer  be ;  and  constantly  bear  in  mind  how  many  of  these 
changes  thou  hast  already  witnessed.  The  universe  is  transformation  ; 
life  is  opinion. 

"Observe  constantly  that  all  things  take  place  by  change,  and 
accustom  thyself  to  consider  that  the  nature  of  the  universe  loves 
nothing  so  much  as  to  change  the  things  which  are  and  to  make  new 
things  like  them.  For  everything  that  exists  is  in  a  manner  the  seed 
of  that  which  will  be. 

"Thou  wilt  soon  die,  and  thou  art  not  yet  simple,  nor  free  from 
perturbations,  nor  without  suspicion  of  being  hurt  by  external  things, 
nor  kindly  disposed  towards  all;  nor  dost  thou  yet  place  wisdom 
only  in  acting  justly. 

"Be  like  the  promontory  against  which  the  waves  continually 
break,  but  it  stands  firm  and  tames  the  fury  of  the  water  around  it. 

"Unhappy  am  I,  because  this  has  happened  to  me  —  not  so,  but 
happy  am  I,  though  this  has  happened  to  me,  because  I  continue  free 
from  pain,  neither  crushed  by  the  present  nor  fearing  the  future.  For 
such  a  thing  as  this  might  have  happened  to  every  man ;  but  every 
man  would  not  have  continued  free  from  pain  on  such  an  occasion. 
Why  then  is  that  rather  a  misfortune  than  this  a  good  fortune?  And 
dost  thou  in  all  cases  call  that  a  man's  misfortune  which  is  not  a  devia- 
tion from  man's  nature?  And  does  a  thing  seem  to  thee  to  be  a 
deviation  from  man's  nature,  when  it  is  not  contrary  to  the  will  of 
man's  nature?  Well,  thou  knowest  the  will  of  nature.  Will  then 
this  which  has  happened  prevent  thee  from  being  just,  magnanimous, 
temperate,  prudent,  secure  against  inconsiderate  opinions  and  false- 
hood ;  will  it  prevent  thee  from  having  modesty,  freedom,  and  every- 
thing else  by  the  presence  of  which  man's  nature  obtains  all  that  is 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  225 

its  own?  Remember,  too,  on  every  occasion  which  leads  thee  to 
vexation  to  apply  this  principle ;  not  that  this  is  a  misfortune,  but  that 
to  bear  it  nobly  is  good  fortune." 

Compare  further  Carmen  XXII  of  Horace :  — 

"Integer  vitae  scelerisque  purus 
Non  eget  Mauris  jaculis,  neque  aveu, 
Nee  veneratis  gravida  sagittlis, 
Fusee  pharetra ; 

Sive  per  Syrtes  iter  sestuosas, 
Sive  facturus  per  inhospitalem 
Caucasum,  vel  quae  loca  fabulosus 
Lambit  Hydaspes." 

Also  compare  with  the  above  the  Christian  hymn :  — 

"How  happy  is  he  born  and  taught. 
Who  serveth  not  another's  wiU ; 
Whose  armor  is  his  honest  thought, 
And  simple  truth  his  utmost  skill ! 

Whose  passions  not  his  masters  are ; 
Whose  soul  is  still  prepared  for  death, 
Not  tied  unto  the  world  by  care 
Of  public  fame  or  private  breath ; 

This  man  is  freed  from  servile  bands 
Of  hope  to  rise  or  fear  to  fall  ; 
Lord  of  himself,  though  not  of  lands, 
And  having  nothing,  yet  hath  all." 

— Sir  Henbt  Wotton. 

The  fundamental  difl&culty  with  the  temporal  life, 
from  the  Buddhistic  standpoint,  is  that  "Wish  is  insati- 
ate." This  is  the  cause  of  all  human  misery.  Time  is 
the  form  of  the  will.  The  giving  up  of  the  will  is  the 
road  to  peace,  bliss,  quietude,  the  cessation  of  existence, 
the  "eternity"  of  Nirvana. 

The  need  of  retiring  from  the  world  to  lead  the 
eternal  Ufe  led  to  the  founding  of  the  Buddhistic  order 
of  monks. 

Christian  Monasticism.  —  A  similar  thought  is  at 
the   root    of   Christian   Monasticism   and   of   Christian 


226  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Mysticism.  The  world  is  full  of  evil,  as  St.  Bernard,  the 
monk  of  Cluni,  says  :  — 

"  Hora  novissima,  tempora  pessima  sunt." 

Eternal  life  is  a  complete  contrast  with  the  life  of  the 
world  and  an  actual  breaking  with  it.  This  way  of  life 
can  only  be  carried  out  thoroughly  through  a  monastic 
type  of  life.  Monachism  or  Monasticism  means  in  the 
first  instance  the  act  of  dwelling  alone.  The  earliest 
Christian  monks,  Paul  of  the  Thebaid  and  St.  Anthony, 
were  of  the  anchoretic  type,  i,e.  monks  who  live  in  solitude 
so  far  as  this  is  practicable.  The  term  has  come  to  mean, 
however,  the  corporate  life  of  a  religious  community 
whose  members  live  under  a  rule  of  strict  discipline,  and 
who  have  taken  the  vows  of  purity,  celibacy,  and  obedi- 
ence. In  this  community-type,  however,  the  earlier 
element  is  not  lost,  since  each  monk  has  his  own  cell  and 
hours  of  solitude,  and  the  motive  at  bottom  seems  much 
the  same,  i,e.  retirement  from  the  world  for  the  sake  of  an 
ideal  experience  which  cannot  be  found  in  society  because 
of  its  corruption  and  worldliness,  its  conflicts,  and  tur- 
moil. According  to  the  Oriental  view,  as  we  have  seen, 
society  was  hopelessly  corrupt.  The  mission  of  the  Ori- 
ental monk  was  not  to  regenerate  society,  —  since  such 
effort  would  have  been  vain,  —  but  to  prevail  upon  all 
men  to  renounce  worldly  existence  altogether.  The  aim 
of  Christian  monasticism  was  the  spiritual  perfection  of 
the  individual  through  contemplation  and  prayer.  To 
the  regular  vows  of  the  monk,  St.  Benedict  joined  the 
principle  of  ''Quies,"  which  included  contemplation, 
adoring  love,  purity,  reverence,  humility,  and  stability. 

/^The  Imitation  of  Christ."  —  In  the  book  of  the 
'*  Imitation  of  Christ,"  the  experience  of  monastic  cloister 
and  cell  finds  its  completest  expression.  Here  is  revealed 
the  life  which  has  forsaken  earthly  things  to  live  with 
the  eternal.     For  example :  — 

"  My  son,  my  son,  thou  canst  not  be  alone  with  me  and  at  the  same 
time  be  delighted  with  transitory  things.    Thou  oughtest  to  be  sepa- 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  227 

rated  from  thy  acquaintances  and  dear  friends  and  keep  thy  mind  free 
from  all  worldly  comfort.  Christ's  faithful  ones  bear  themselves  in 
this  world  as  strangers  and  pilgrims. 

"In  silence  and  quiet  the  devout  soul  goeth  forth  and  learneth  the 
hidden  things  of  the  Scriptures.  Therein  findeth  she  a  fountain  of 
tears,  wherein  to  wash  and  cleanse  herself  each  night,  that  she  may 
grow  the  more  dear  to  her  maker  as  she  dwelleth  the  further  from  all 
worldly  distraction.  To  him  who  withdraweth  himself  from  his  ac- 
quaintance and  friends  God  with  His  holy  angels  will  draw  nigh.  It 
is  better  to  be  unknown  and  to  take  heed  to  oneself  than  to  neglect 
oneself  and  work  wonders.  It  is  praiseworthy  for  a  religious  man  to 
go  seldom  abroad,  to  fly  from  being  seen,  to  have  no  desire  to  see 
men. 

"No  man  is  worthy  of  heavenly  consolation  but  he  who  hath  dili- 
gently exercised  himself  in  holy  compunction.  If  thou  wilt  feel  com- 
punction in  thy  heart,  enter  into  thy  chamber  and  shut  out  the  tumults 
of  the  world,  as  it  is  written,  'Commune  with  your  own  heart  in  your 
chamber  and  be  still.'  In  retirement  thou  shalt  find  what  often  thou 
wilt  lose  abroad.  Retirement,  if  thou  continue  therein,  groweth 
sweet,  but  if  thou  keep  not  in  it,  it  begetteth  weariness.  If  in  the 
beginning  of  thy  conversation  thou  dwell  in  it  and  keep  it  weU,  it  shall 
•afterwards  be  to  thee  as  a  dear  friend,  and  a  most  pleasant  solace. 

"Busy  not  thyself  with  the  affairs  of  others,  nor  entangle  thyself 
with  the  business  of  great  men.  Keep  always  thine  eye  upon  thyself 
first  of  all,  and  give  advice  to  thyself  specially  before  all  thy  dearest 
friends.  If  thou  hast  not  the  favour  of  men,  be  not  thereby  cast  down, 
but  let  thy  concern  be  that  thou  boldest  not  thyself  so  well  and  cir- 
cumspectly as  becometh  a  servant  of  God  and  a  devout  monk.  It  is 
often  better  and  safer  for  a  man  not  to  have  many  comforts  in  this 
life,  especially  those  which  concern  the  flesh.  But  that  we  lack  divine 
comforts  or  feel  them  rarely  is  to  our  own  blame,  because  we  seek  not 
compunction  of  heart,  nor  utterly  cast  away  those  comforts  which 
are  vain  and  worldly. 

"Know  thyself  to  be  unworthy  of  divine  consolation,  and  worthy, 
rather,  of  much  tribulation.  When  a  man  hath  perfect  compunction, 
then  all  the  world  is  burdensome  and  bitter  to  him.  A  good  man  will 
find  sufficient  cause  or  mourning  and  weeping ;  for  whether  he  con- 
sidereth  himself,  or  pondereth  concerning  his  neighbor,  he  knoweth 
that  no  man  liveth  here  without  tribulation,  and  the  more  thoroughly 
he  considereth  himself,  the  more  thoroughly  he  grieveth.  Grounds 
for  just  grief  and  inward  compunction,  then,  are  in  our  sins  and  vices, 
wherein  we  lie  so  entangled  that  we  are  but  seldom  able  to  contemplate 
heavenly  things." 

"  What,  then,  shaU  I  do,  Lord  ? 


228  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

"0  Lord,  I  shall  need  more  grace,  if  I  would  arrive  where  neither 
man  nor  any  other  creature  may  hinder  me.  For  so  long  as  anything 
keepeth  me  back,  I  cannot  freely  fly  unto  thee.  He  desired  eagerly 
thus  to  fly,  who  cried,  saying  '  0  that  I  had  wings  like  a  dove,  for  then 
I  would  flee  away  and  be  at  rest.'  What  is  more  peaceful  than  the 
single  eye?  And  what  more  free  than  he  that  desireth  nothing  upon 
earth?  Therefore  must  a  man  rise  above  every  creature,  and  per- 
fectly forsake  himself,  and  with  abstracted  mind  to  stand  and  behold 
that  Thou,  the  Creator  of  all  things,  hast  among  Thy  creatures  nothing 
like  unto  Thyself.  And  except  a  man  be  freed  from  all  creatures,  he 
will  not  be  able  to  reach  freely  after  Divine  things.  Therefore,  few 
are  found  who  give  themselves  to  contemplation,  because  few  know 
how  to  separate  themselves  entirely  from  perishing  and  created  things. 

''But  he  who  attribute th  anything  good  to  himself,  hindereth  the 
grace  of  God  from  coming  to  him,  because  the  grace  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
ever  seeketh  the  humble  heart." 

The  note  of  individualistic  experience  characteristic  of 
religious  mysticism  is  found  here  also  :  — 

"Trusting  in  thy  goodness  and  great  mercy,  O  Lord,  I  draw  near, 
the  sick  to  the  Healer,  the  hungering  and  thirsting  to  the  Fountain  of 
Life,  the  poverty-stricken  to  the  King  of  Heaven,  the  desolate  to  my 
own  gentle  Comforter.  Who  am  I  that  Thou  shouldst  offer  me  Thy- 
self?   How  doth  a  sinner  dare  to  appear  before  Thee?"     (IV-II.) 

This  is  individual  experience,  yet  the  monastic  indi- 
vidual was  potentially  every  man.  Social  rank  made  no 
difference,  the  individual  was  received  on  his  merit  as  a 
possible  child  of  God.^  But  this  sonship  to  God  meant 
for  monasticism,  renunciation  of  the  world  with  its 
earthly  delights,  and  all  the  things  of  time  in  order  to  live, 
as  far  as  might  be,  the  eternal  life  here  and  how ;  that  is, 
by  means  of  monastic  disciplines  and  the  principle  of 
'^Quies,"  the  monk  hoped  to  attain  to  the  ^'Visio  divinse 
essentiae/' 

The  Time  World.  —  To  live  in  the  eternal  and 
permanent,  is  to  be  above  the  time  world  with  its 
questionings,  cares,  and  pettinesses;  its  personal  jeal- 
ousies, rivalries  and  quarrelings.  It  means  to  live  no 
more  ^'a  life  of  shreds  and  patches"  but  to  live  in 
^  See  Henry  S.  Nash,  "The  Genesis  of  the  Social  Conscience." 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  229 

^'a  divine  unity."  But,  on  the  other  hand,  will  seems 
to  be  the  essence  of  life  and  certainly  of  morality;  and 
how  is  it  possible  to  completely  break  with  it,  as  the 
Buddhist,  for  example,  counsels?  A  double  protest 
therefore  is  raised  against  the  '^ eternal'^  attitude,  a  pro- 
test from  morality  and  from  an  ethical  religion ;  (1st)  be- 
cause, in  making  time  unreal  as  Buddhism  does,  and  as 
Christian  monasticism  and  mysticism  tend  to  do,  it  takes 
away  all  meaning  from  our  actual  life,  and  after  all,  it  is 
in  the  midst  of  this  everyday  life  that  most  men  must 
live.  To  find  eternal  life  is  to  lose  life  itself.  It  is  not 
only  to  make  concrete  existence  meaningless,  but  the 
eternal  goal  an  emptiness  and  a  void.  The  Nirvana 
experience  which  has  broken  away  from  the  time  world 
into  the  ^'sorrowless  state"  of  a  timeless  world  vanishes 
at  last  at  the  limit  of  the  trances  into  a  realm  of  uncon- 
sciousness and  of  nothingness,  or  at  least  of  the  inexpres- 
sible and  incommunicable  of  sheer  emotion,  and  is  not 
this  outcome  true  in  the  final  analysis  of  all  mysticism? 

(2d)  It  is  to  overthrow  morality  with  its  endless  striv- 
ing for  perfection.  The  goal  of  an  ethical  religion  is  the 
goal  of  a  temporal  process,  a  process  which  is  a  ^' pro- 
gression" or  series  of  steps,  in  which  no  act  is  exactly 
repeated,  in  which  no  recurrence  takes  place.  But  an 
"eternal  Now"  would  be  the  death  of  such  a  process. 

The  perfect  carrying  out  of  the  principle  of  "Quies" 
of  Christian  monasticism,  i.e.  of  withdrawal  from  the 
world  to  meditate  upon  the  eternal,  until  the  individual 
selfhood  is  lost,  engulfed  in  the  infinite,  would  make  of 
eternal  life  a  dream  vain  and  ineffectual  in  relation  to 
concrete  life.  Already  we  have  seen  in  our  study  of  the 
motive  of  flight  from  the  world  that  this  life  of  with- 
drawal in  so  far  as  it  does  appear  in  the  life  of  the 
world,  inclines  to  intellectual  bigotry,  to  egotism  and  the 
disregard  of  social  obligations,  and  to  persecutions  and 
inquisitions  for  the  glory  of  God. 

Monasticism  never  completely  carried  out  the  princi- 


230  THE    DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

pie  of  ''Quies.''  Even  the  Buddhistic  monks,  whose 
goal,  as  far  as  external  conditions  were  concerned,  was 
the  life  of  the  forest  (see  p.  105),  must,  as  enjoined 
by  their  master,  teach  their  gospel  to  the  people.  And 
the  Nirvana-state  of  ''blissful  nothingness"  itself  could 
only  be  attained  by  means  of  the  disciplines  of  the  ten 
perfections  and  by  the  long  series  of  trances,  —  them- 
selves temporal  processes,  —  and  not  even  then  could 
Nirvana  be  reached  unless  we  identify  Nirvana  with  an 
enlightened  state  of  mind,  for  Nirvana  is  still  the  limit  to 
the  series,  it  is  still  the  ever-beyond. 

The  aim  of  monasticism  in  the  West  seems  always  to 
have  differed  somewhat  from  that  of  Oriental  monasti- 
cism. The  Benedictine  monks  believed  in  the  gospel  of 
work.  If  the  imagination  loves  to  dwell  on  the  mediaeval 
monk  in  solitary  prayer  in  his  cell,  if  it  delights  to  picture 
him  illuminating  a  missal  in  the  great  library  of  some 
old-world  monastery,  surrounded  by  ancient  treasures  in 
leather-bound  volumes,  and  with  frescoes  of  sacred  scenes 
or  portraits  of  the  saints  upon  the  walls;  if  we  love  to 
think  of  him  at  work  amongst  his  flowers  in  the  monas- 
tery garden,  or  walking  with  a  chosen  companion  in  the 
cloisters  overlooking  some  wonderful  scene  of  nature, 
while  the  two  perhaps  discuss  together  some  high  theme  ; 
still  we  must  not  forget  that  monasticism  had  its  social 
side,  its  organization  and  its  rules,  and  that  the  monk, 
too,  went  down  into  the  struggle  of  the  world  and  took 
part  in  its  conflicts  and  its  active  needs.  Fleeing  from 
the  world,  the  monks  sought  to  build  up  an  ideal  com- 
munity of  the  type  of  the  apostolic  community,  in  a 
world  of  its  own,  ix.  in  the  monastery  life.  But  this 
new  social  ideal  soon  involved  the  monk  in  the  actual, 
temporal  world  of  everyday  people.  The  Benedictine 
monks,  at  least,  were  both  unconsciously  and  con- 
sciously active  promoters  of  civilization.  In  the  history 
of  Christian  monasticism,  we  read  how  the  Benedictines 
cultivated   the   soil,   drained   the   marshes,   cleared  the 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  231 

forest.  They  kept  learning  alive  in  a  barbarian  age, 
promoted  industrial  and  aesthetic  arts.  They  gave  to 
the  world  an  example  of  a  consecrated  life  and  an  orderly 
government.  Consciously  they  were  the  teachers  of  the 
people  and  the  upholders  of  social  morality.  They  were 
devoted  to  works  of  charity  and  reform.  The  monastery 
far  away  in  the  hills  became  a  shelter  for  the  wayfarer, 
a  hospital  for  the  sick,  a  refuge  for  the  needy,  the  dis- 
tributor of  alms  for  the  poor.  The  monk,  going  about 
among  the  humble  and  poor  of  the  neighborhood,  healing 
the  sick,  giving  counsel,  teaching  all  the  arts  from  ag- 
riculture to  music,  was  at  that  time  perhaps  the  chief 
upholder  and  promoter  of  civilization,  —  i.e.  he  was  the 
preserver  and  promoter  of  the  practical,  moral  life ;  in  a 
word,  of  the  life  in  a  concrete,  a  time  world. 

The  principles  even  of  mysticism  and  of  quietism  seem 
to  have  been  compatible  with  much  practical  activity,  as 
is  shown  by  the  preaching  of  the  German  mystics,  Tauler 
and  Suso ;  and  this  is  seen  again  in  the  founding  of  orders, 
as  by  St.  Dominic,  St.  Francis,  and  St.  Teresa,  and  also  in 
their  philanthropic  labors.  The  monastic  communities 
themselves  were  social  organisms,  with  their  governing 
rules,  disciplines,  divisions  of  labor  and  of  command, 
regular  tasks,  fixed  times,  etc.  The  governing  principle, 
to  be  sure,  of  this  organism,  was  the  principle  of  ^^Quies" 
already  referred  to. 

Finally,  of  course,  in  the  great  social  organization  of  the 
mediaeval  Catholic  church,  the  ideal  of  the  early  monas- 
tics and  of  the  reformers  such  as  St.  Dominic  and  St. 
Francis,  —  the  ideal  of  the  direct  relation  of  the  individ- 
ual soul  to  the  divine  soul,  —  was  almost  lost  sight  of  in 
the  pomp,  luxury,  and  worldliness  of  a  temporal  world- 
power.  Yet  by  means  of  the  social  structure  of  monas- 
ticism  the  spiritual  ideal  was  kept  alive  and  held  up 
as  a  possibility  for  every  man ;  and  although  its  ideal  — 
of  a  consecrated  life  —  could  be  perfectly  carried  out 
only  in  the  monastery  and  by  means  of  ascetic  disciphnes, 


232  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

yet  in  spite  of  themselves  the  monastic  orders  were 
brought  into  relations  with  the  temporal,  social  life  of 
the  outside  world  which  they  helped  to  humanize  and 
spiritualize. 

Our  age  seeks  to  return  to  the  Greek  view  of  life.  It 
seeks  to  find  the  summum  honum  in  the  temperal  world, 
and  in  some  purely  natural  good,  —  in  the  completest 
development  of  natural  human  powers.  Moreover,  our 
age  is  strenuous.  For  it  there  is  no  life  "beside  still 
waters, ''  no  life  of  meditation  and  prayer.  It  is  absorbed 
in  present-day  activities,  and  to  the  values  of  a  world  be- 
yond the  social  morality  which  is  actually  realizable,  here 
and  now  it  pays  Uttle  heed.  To  seek  to  save  one^s  own 
soul  for  another  world,  as  monasticism  did,  that  is  selfish 
and  unjustifiable.  To  work  for  men,  in  the  every  day 
life,  to  improve  social  conditions  and  increase  opportuni- 
ties, this  is  a  better,  a  truer  aim.  For  instance,  to  take 
an  example  of  the  highest  expression  of  this  aim: 

"  To  set  up  ideals  of  perfection  which  are  other  than  the  serious 
recognition  of  the  possibiUties  resident  in  each  concrete  situation  is 
in  the  end  to  pay  ourselves  with  sentimentalities,  if  not  with  words, 
and  meanwhile  it  is  to  direct  thought  and  energy  away  from  the  situa- 
tions which  need  and  which  welcome  the  perfecting  care  of  attention 
and  affection."  * 

Nevertheless  because  we  have  lost  our  vision  of  a  "  be- 
yond world,"  and  our  sense  of  the  reality  of  the  fife  of  the 
spirit,  we  seem  to  be  drifting  rudderless  on  the  sea  of  life. 
In  bewilderment  we  see  all  about  us  ideals  and  standards 
of  action  which  we  once  believed  to  be  as  fundamental 
and  as  enduring  as  anything  could  be,  changing  and  col- 
lapsing under  the  searching  criticism  of  the  new  age.  In- 
toxicated with  its  brilliant  scientific  discoveries  and  in- 
ventions and  with  the  future  possibilities  in  this  respect 
which  beckon  to  it  along  the  far  horizon;  self-compla- 
cent in  its  great  materiaKstic,  industrial  development 
»  Dewey  and  Tufts,  "Ethics,"  p.  422. 


THE   WAY   OF  LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  233 

which  it  too  often  takes  for  progress;  and  over  self-con- 
scious in  its  demand  for  social  reform,  opportunity  and 
education  for  all  men,  our  age  heeds  not  the  warning 
voices  of  its  moralists  and  preachers  who  upbraid  it 
for  forsaking  spiritual  issues,  and  spiritual  goals.  For 
the  spirit  of  a  ^^  new  paganism  '^  is  abroad,  and  one  cannot 
tell  whither  it  will  lead.  If  we  do  not  harken  to  these 
prophetic  voices  and  take  up  arms  against  the  peril  of 
this  new  paganism,  it  may  be  that  in  our  recklessness  we 
shall  at  last  find  ourselves  swept  by  winds  and  currents 
of  skepticism  and  pessimism,  by  an  overwhelming  sense 
of  the  relativity  of  all  values  and  the  illusoriness  of  all 
those  undertakings  over  which  we  have  been  so  eager, 
far  out  into  the  sea  of  disenchantment  and  despair; 
or  our  age  will  turn  doubting  and  disillusioned  —  as 
so  many  ages  have  done  before  it^  —  to  that  recurrent 
state  of  mediaeval  mysticism,  or  else  to  a  "  new  "  mysticism. 
We  cannot  find  peace  however  in  a  purely  temporal 
order  or  a  merely  natural  development  or  goal.  On  the 
other  hand  the  experience  of  the  past  seems  to  show  that 
the  flight  to  the  emotionalism  and  passivity  of  pure 
mysticism  is  unavaiUng.  We  shall  not  find  life's  goal 
and  significance  there ;  and  the  new  form  of  mysticism  is 
a  kind  of  scientific  mysticism  for  which  reality  is  also  at 
bottom  naturalistic,  —  a  mysticism  which,  in  trying  to 
give  a  scientific  basis  for  its  existence,  becomes  a  non- 
spiritual  mysticism.  It  worships  the  blind  forces  of  life 
even  when  it  calls  them  by  the  name  of  God.  To  be  sure, 
it  extols  reason  and  himian  ideals  of  justice  and  mercy. 
But  these  are  for  it,  man-made  and  finite  ideals,  even  if 
ideals  as  yet  unrealized  in  the  social  order.  These  ideals 
seem  like  some  wandering  meteor,  from  an  unknown  and 
alien  realm,  which  has  chanced  to  visit  our  earth ;  or  like 
some  exotic  plant  leading  a  perilous  existence  in  a  strange 
environment ;  whether  they  will  be  able  to  triumph  and  en- 
dure in  a  non-spiritual  world  we  cannot  tell.    This  is  a  kind 

1  See  Chapter  I. 


234  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

of  mysticism,  so  it  seems  to  me,  which  one  finds  poetically 
blended  with  the  empiricism  of  George  Santayana,  and 
of  the  same  type  is  the  mysticism  of  Maurice  Maeterlinck. 
The  half -gods,  to  be  sure,  have  gone ;  but  the  true  gods  tarry. 

Already  we  have  seen  how  religion  has  sought  through 
flight  to  live  the  eternal  life  apart  from  the  world.  But 
there  is  a  danger  in  thus  lifting  life  out  of  time  that  the 
religious  consciousness  will  become  indifferent  to  actual, 
human  experience. 

For  the  majority  of  men,  monasticism  is  an  impos- 
sibiUty.  They  demand  that  life  shall  be  active  and  prac- 
tical. Hence  we  find  the  tendency  either  to  separate  the 
life  of  religion  from  the  everyday  life  of  the  workshop 
and  the  street,  or  else  to  identify  religion  with  morality 
and  to  abandon  entirely  the  more  specifically  religious 
attitude.  Have  not  mediaeval  Christianity  and  the  vari- 
ous Christian  sects  of  the  present  day  failed  in  most 
respects  to  carry  out  Christ^s  gospel  of  the  Kingdom 
of  God  on  earth  ?^  For  let  us  look  for  a  moment 
at  the  actual  life  of  Christian  communities.  The  ''ruth- 
less wiir'  seeks  to  get  for  itself  what  it  can  out  of  life 
regardless  of  the  rights  and  welfare  of  the  neighbor. 
We  have  only  to  consider  the  lives,  without  oppor- 
tunity and  without  joy,  of  the  children  who  work  in 
mines  and  factories,  in  whose  young  lives  the  most 
valuable  creative  impulses  are  crushed  out  with  the 
destruction  of  their  vitality;  of  the  monotonous  toil 
in  dangerous  occupations  of  thousands  of  adults ;  of  the 
horror  of  overcrowded,  unsanitary  tenements ;  of  the  de- 
velopment of  vice  and  crime  in  innocent  youth  through 
amusements  carried  on  for  individual  gain.  The  immense 
fortunes  made  in  a  brief  time  in  the  United  States  in  the 
latter  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  are  one  witness  to  the 
fact  that  man  is  serving  mammon  and  not  God.^ 

^  The  present  "  great  war"  is  surely  another  witness  to  failure. 

*  See  the  story  of  the  rapid  development  of  New  York  City 
and  the  immense  fortunes  made  there  unscrupulously  in  **Book  of 
Daniel  Drew,"  already  cited. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  235 

Only  now  are  the  American  people  beginning  to  awaken 
to  the  crying  need  for  social  regeneration.  We  cannot, 
however,  return  to  the  past,  and,  here  in  America,  this 
means  we  cannot  return  to  the  days  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers 
whose  high  ideals  we  rightly  honor.  For,  as  has  been 
said,  *' plainly,  it  is  a  new  age.''  ^ 

The  literature  of  our  day,  when  vital,  throbs  with 
a  new  significance,  a  new  passion.  The  modern  atti- 
tude as  we  have  said  is  changed  from  that  of  the  past. 
The  immigrants  from  the  old  world  who  throng  to 
our  shores  have  brought  to  us  a  new  type  of  char- 
acter and  another  point  of  view.^  The  spiritual  ideals 
of  the  past  which  we  cherish  must  be  adapted  to  a 
new  people  and  a  new  civilization.  '^We  need,''  as 
President  Wilson  has  said,  ^^a  new  point  of  view,  a 
new  method  and  spirit  of  counsel."  But  as  we  rise 
to  this  insight  and  our  conscience  responds  to  its 
appeal,  and  some  at  least  among  us,  our  leaders, 
accepting  the  challenge  of  the  new  spirit,  devote 
themselves  to  the  task  of  the  reconstruction  of  the 
economic  social  life  of  the  community,  another  danger 
threatens,  the  danger  that  the  rehgious  consciousness  — 
that  consciousness  which  is  Ufted  to  God  in  worship 
and  prayer  —  will  disappear,  through  being  merged  in 
the  purely  social  consciousness,  and  that  the  human 
race  and  the  social  whole  of  the  actual  present  will 
take  the  place  of  the  ''Eternal"  —  the  God  of  our 
fathers. 

I  think  we  find  this  attitude  exemplified  in  very  many 
of  the  books  on  religion  which  have  appeared  since  the 
opening  of  the  present  century.^ 

Yet  in   our  study  of   the  mystical  and  Buddhistic 

1  President  Wilson  in  his  letter  of  acceptance  of  the  Democratic 
nomination  for  the  Presidency. 

2  See,  on  this  point,  the  writings  of  Jane  Addams. 

'  For  example,  in  the  books  of  Professors  Ames  and  Patton  and 
Carver,  already  cited. 


236  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

consciousness,  we  saw  that  religious  experience  does 
seem  to  rise  out  of  time.  It  is  able  to  abandon  the 
longing,  striving  will,  and  to  find  peace  in  the  vision  of 
God,  and  in  contemplation,  which  pays  little  heed  to 
the  temporal  world  with  its  passing  events  and  chang- 
ing fortunes.  It  views  the  world  suh  specie  oeternitatis. 
The  eternal  point  of  view,  according  to  St.  Thomas 
Aquinas,  is  a  totum  simul.  For  God  takes  no  account 
of  the  passing  show  of  time.  God's  plan  is  fulfilled  and 
every  temporal  event  and  every  finite  will  has  its  unique 
place  or  significance  in  the  meaning  of  the  universe  as 
a  whole. 

Can  man,  the  finite,  rise  to  this  point  of  view,  and  if  so, 
once  more,  what  becomes  of  this  our  concrete  temporal 
fife? 

There  are,  I  think,  in  man's  life  moments  which  may 
properly  be  called  '^timeless''  moments.  The  playing 
child,  absorbed  in  carrjdng  out  his  ''dream  of  human  life," 
what  has  he  to  do  with  time?  The  boy,  who  spends  a 
June  day  wandering  over  hills  and  pastures  in  search  of 
adventure,  is  surprised  when  he  finds  on  his  return  home 
that  dinner  was  over  long  ago.  What  did  Stevenson's 
''Lantern  Bearers"  know  of  the  passing  hours,  I  wonder! 
Men  and  women,  too,  have  sometimes  their  hours  of 
creative  playing.  In  the  intense  appreciation  of  art  in 
its  various  forms,  the  element  of  time  seems  not  to  enter. 
And  even  more  must  this  be  true  for  the  creative  artist 
himself,  or  for  the  joyful  discoverer  of  new  truth,  who, 
as  he  works  over  his  problem,  as  one  who  watches  the 
coming  of  the  dawn,  begins  to  get  glimpses  of  the  solution. 
It  is  true,  too,  of  the  care-free  hours  of  conversation  when 
at  its  best  —  ("a  series  of  intoxications,"  Emerson  calls 
it)  —  and  also  of  happy  companionship.  Again  and  again 
the  poets  ^  have  shown  us  that  the  ecstatic  moments  of  the 
true  lover  of  nature  are  timeless.     Especially,  as  we  have 

1  See,  e.g.y  Wordsworth,  the  lines  beginmng,  **  Wisdom  and  Spirit  of 
the  Universe." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  237 

seen  in  our  discussions,  does  it  appear  to  be  true  of  the 
rapturous  moments  of  religious  contemplation  which  the 
mystic  knows.  To  a  Thomas  a  Kempis,  living  the  life 
of  the  cloister,  while  he  meditates  on  the  meaning  of  the 
Cross  of  Christ,  and  becomes  absorbed  in  the  ecstatic 
vision  of  the  Eternal,  the  outside  world  and  the  passing 
of  the  moments  of  the  time-stream  are  as  if  they  were 
not. 

There  are,  then,  '^ timeless  moments"  in  the  life  of 
finite  man.  In  these  moments  our  purposes  are,  rela- 
tively speaking,  fulfilled.  But  these  are  either  the  ab- 
sorbed, or  the  appreciative,  or  the  aesthetically  creative 
moments  of  our  lives.  They  are  not  its  practical,  its 
ethically  active  moments.  Nor,  when  we  speak  specifi- 
cally of  the  religious  problem  in  relation  to  time,  do  such 
mystical  moments  represent  the  whole  of  the  religious 
consciousness.     For  religious  experience  as  a  whole, 

"  Time  like  a  pane  of  many-colored  glass 
Stains  the  white  radiance  of  eternity." 

For  man,  because  of  his  essential  ideality,  the  beyond  re- 
mains and  the  world  is  in  time. 

Summary 

The  restless  fleeting  moments  of  our  concrete  experience 
pass  in  vivid  contrast-effect  with  the  absolute  and  un- 
changing ideals  which  the  religious  experience  demands. 
Religion,  therefore,  has  turned  away  from  time  and  the 
mutability  of  our  actual  fife,  to  meditate  upon  eternal 
hfe;  to  dwell  with  God,  in  communion  and  prayer,  and 
thereby  to  attain  peace  and  enUghtenment,  or  to  lose 
itself  in  ecstasy. 

But  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  active,  concrete  ex- 
perience, and  of  social  morality,  life  has  meaning  and 
value  just  because  it  is  temporal.  The  life  in  time,  with 
its  infinite  variety,  its  vitality  and  its  dramatic  quality, 
is  contrasted  with  the  emptiness  of  Nirvana  and  a  Heaven 


238  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

of  unending  bliss,  which  appears  stagnation.     Logically, 
unity  without  difference  reduces  to  nothingness.     Con- 
cretely, a  finished  and  perfect  world  means  monotony, 
stagnation,  and  weariness  of  spirit.     It  means  the  end  of 
morality  and  of  progress.     Hence  the  tendency  of  our  own 
day  and  generation  to  prize  change,  to  pursue  variety 
and  novelty  as  ends  in  themselves,  to  find  the  crown 
and  goal  of  existence  in  the  concrete  moment  as  it  flies. 
The  nineteenth  century  was  very  proud  of  its  achieve- 
ments, which  it  termed  progress.     No  doubt  there  has  been 
a  gain  in  freedom  of  action,  in  wealth  and  variety  of 
experience  and  in  a  better  adjustment  to  the  environment, 
physical  and  social.     But  already  the  twentieth  century 
is  beginning  to  scorn  the  ideas  and  sentiments  of  the  nine- 
teenth which,  in   English-speaking  countries,  it  names 
somewhat  derisively  early,  mid  and  late  Victorian.     The 
twentieth  century  appears  to  stand  for  social  ideals  — 
and  it  has  a  great  task  before  it  on  social  lines.     Yet 
one  is  not  sure  how  far  these  ideals  are  truly  spirit- 
ual, how  far,  that  is,  the  new  century  has  really  ad- 
vanced beyond  its  predecessor.    The  attitude  described 
above  is  a  perilous  one  and  sure  at  last  to  fail.     Then 
the  alternative  to  pessimism  and  despair  is,  as  we  have 
already  noted,  likely  to   be  some  form  of  mysticism. 
Yet,  as  we  have  said  many  times,  religious  experience 
is  not  pure  mysticism.      It  is  active,  ethical,  social,  and 
consequently,  it  is  temporal.      The  eternal,   therefore, 
needs  the  temporal.     From  this  position  we  seem  un- 
able to  escape.     For  what  ethical  value  can  there  be 
in    a   life   which   ignores   all   the   anguish   and   misery 
of   this   our   human   world,   and   abandons   it    to    fate 
in  order  to  dream  its  dream  of  eternity  and  heaven? 
Because  the  mutability  of  the  time  stream  of  actual 
life  seems  to  reduce  life  to  meaninglessness,  the  reli- 
gious spirit  flees  away  from  the  perishable  and  tem- 
poral to  rest  in  the  eternal.     Yet  if  the  ^'unchanging" 
and  eternal  is  all,  we  are  driven  logically  to  the  con- 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  239 

elusion  that  there  is  no  change,  no  progress,  no  history, 
no  moral  efficiency,  nothing  dramatic  in  existence,  no 
meaning  or  value  in  the  universe.  But  if  once  more  we 
introduce  the  temporal,  we  are  involved  in  an  unending 
process;  all  is  incompleteness  and  the  whole  is  not  the 
whole.  There  is  no  assurance  that  our  ideals  have  any 
foundation  in  fact  or  that  ^'the  besf  is  also  the  ''real'' 
and  the  "true.''  Progress  seems  to  be  merely  a  rhythm 
of  ebb  and  flow,  like  the  rise  and  fall  of  the  tides  of  the 
ocean,  an  eternal  recurrence,  rather  than  evolution  towards 
a  goal  of  spiritual  value.  As  in  the  case  of  the  opposi- 
tion between  the  mystical  and  the  ethical  religious  experi- 
ence, neither  form  alone  is  satisfactory ;  yet  if  we  seek  to 
combine  them  we  appear  to  be  involved  in  a  contradic- 
tion. For  how  can  we  unite  that  which  is  eternal, 
unchanging,  at  rest,  satisfied,  complete  and  perfect,  with 
that  which  is  a  striving,  an  unceasing  change,  a  dissatis- 
faction, incompleteness  and  imperfection? 

It  is  the  same  problem,  in  another  form,  which  we  en- 
countered in  our  discussion  of  the  opposition  between 
''grace"  and  "merit,"  "freedom"  and  "necessity."  In 
that  discussion,  we  found  that  if  man  is  saved  by  grace, 
then  there  is  apparently  no  merit  or  moral  quality  in  man's 
activity ;  or,  if  his  freedom  is  finally  reduced  to  uniqueness, 
—  that  is,  identity  between  his  will  and  the  will  of  God  in 
him, — then,  since  uniqueness  of  the  individual  will  logically 
has  its  basis  in  its  relation  to  the  universal  will,  —  the 
world  as  a  whole  seems  static,  changeless,  and  as  a  con- 
sequence to  be  without  novelty,  creative  activity,  or 
progress.  In  that  discussion  we  looked  forward  to  the 
consideration  of  the  opposition  of  the  eternal  and  the 
temporal  for  further  light.  In  so  far,  however,  as  we  view  • 
our  immersion  in  the  time  stream  as  something  fatal, 
these  difficulties  seem  only  increased.  It  has  been  said, 
however,  that  time  is  the  form  of  the  will,  and  it  seems 
necessary  to  consider  more  fully  what  this  implies  and 
means. 


240  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

According  to  William  James's  account,^  we  have  an 
immediate  intuition  of  time,  i.e.  a  qualitative  experience 
of  the  '^ specious  present/'  so-called,  which  is  no  mere 
point  or  '^glow-worm  spark  of  consciousness"  but  is  itself 
a  duration,  a  perception  of  sequence,  i.e,  of  elements 
fading  out  of  consciousness  and  of  elements  coming  into 
consciousness  and  of  the  change  between  them.  This 
irreducible  experience  is  'Hhe  paragon  and  prototype  of 
all  conceived  times." 

Quantitative  time  —  the  time  of  our  clocks  and  calen- 
dars, is  not  this  time  of  our  immediate  experience ;  it  is 
conventionalized  time.  Conventional  time  is  artificially 
divided,  for  purposes  of  practical  and  scientific  conven- 
ience, into  equal  intervals.  It  is  a  transformation  of  our 
real  experience.  The  material  or  phenomenal  world  ex- 
ists in  quantitative  time  because  the  concept  of  matter 
also  implies  a  transformation  of  our  direct  sense  experi- 
ence into  terms  of  science. 

But  time  in  its  final  meaning  is  neither  an  immediate 
datum  of  experience,  nor  yet  a  scientific  ^^  construct." 
Time  —  the  unending  series  of  "befores  and  afters"  with 
the  '^between"  link  of  the  vanishing  present,  —  an  instant 
which  ever  flies  and  as  we  speak  of  it  is  no  more  —  this 
time  stream  is  in  ultimate  meaning  a  teleological  series, 
a  series  determined  by  our  will  activity  and  our  purposes.^ 

Reflection  upon  the  swiftly  flying  moments  of  himian 
experience  gave,  as  we  saw,  to  the  religious  conscious- 
ness a  sense  of  the  fateful  irreversibility  of  time,  and 
a  further  sense  of  unreality  and  lack  of  meaning  to  the 
temporal  life.  Hence  religion  sought  eternity.  For 
like  the  life  of  the  moth  which  flutters  for  a  brief  hour  in 
the  sunshine,  seemed  the  life  of  man  in  its  emptiness  and 
meaninglessness  on  the  one  hand;    and  on  the  other 

1  Waiiam  James,  ^'Principles  of  Psychology,"  Vol.  I,  Chap.  XV. 

2  For  this  whole  discussion,  see  Professor  Royce's  interpretation  of 
time  in  "World  and  Individual,"  Vol.  II,  Chap.  Ill,  and  Hihbert 
Journal,  July,  1907. 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  241 

hand,  the  irrevocableness  of  the  moments  when  gone, 
gave  a  sense  of  a  bUndunpersonal  fate  in  the  universe  which 
brings  to  the  heart  such  poignant  anguish  as  escapes  in 
the  poet's  cry :  — 

"  O  death  in  life,  the  days  that  are  no  more  !  " 

And,  as  for  the  future,  it  remains  a  "golden  dream  which 
may  never  be  fulfilled. 

But  from  this  deeper  aspect  of  the  temporal,  the  dis- 
tinctions of  past,  present,  and  future  of  the  time  stream 
are  the  necessary  distinctions  of  the  purposeful  will. 
For  the  deeds  of  this  same  past  are  the  stepping-stones 
or  basis  of  future  deeds.  So  in  a  sense  it  is  true  we  forge 
our  own  past,  and  the  past  lives  on  in  the  present.  The 
present  is  the  opportunity  for  action;  the  future  that 
temporal  field  to  which  our  present  purposes  and  deeds 
reach  out,  and  in  which  they  seek  their  fulfilment,  and 
so  long  as  there  are  valuable  purposes  of  the  universe 
unfulfilled,  so  long  will  the  future  endure.  Hence  we 
speak  of  the  imending  stream  of  time.  The  distinction 
of  past,  present,  and  future,  and  the  irrevocability  of 
the  temporal  are  finally  due  to  a  will  which  demands 
that  each  one  of  its  acts  shall  be  unique,  hence  acts  which 
necessarily  appear  in  a  temporal  process  and  which  are 
non-recurrent. 

This  practical  will  is  a  purposeful  will,  which  seeks 
to  embody  its  ideal  in  a  temporal  series  of  unique  acts, 
and  for  such  a  will,  seeking  perfection,  the  goal  is  un- 
attainable, i.e.  there  is  always  another  step  to  take,  another 
task  to  be  accomplished,  another  duty  to  be  done,  another 
goal  to  be  won,  another  obligation  to  be  met.  The  ideal 
therefore  is  ever  beyond.  But  this,  we  saw  at  the  outset, 
is  the  very  essence  of  religious  experience,  and  in  the  light 
of  this  truth  the  present  state  is  necessarily  one  of  dis- 
satisfaction. This  fact,  also,  we  found  in  our  study  of 
the  universal  elements  of  religious  experience.  For  an 
ethical   rehgious   consciousness  —  because   perfection   is 


242  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

yet  to  be  won  —  demands  an  infinite  series  of  new  and 
unique  deeds,  i.e.  logically,  a  progression  of  terms,  ^'an 
open  series,"  as  it  is  called ;  metaphysically,  it  is  a  teleo- 
logical  process. 

Time,  chance,  and  change  —  these  are  among  the  most 
tragic  facts  of  our  existence,  not  only  because  we  cannot 
keep  the  beloved  past  in  its  immediacy,  but  even  more, 
perhaps,  because  in  a  sense  we  must  keep  it,  because  of  the 
unique  and  irrevocable  nature  of  our  deeds. 

I  am  not  one  of  those  to  counsel  one  to  try  to  get  away 
from  the  past  by  ignoring  and  forgetting  it,  yet  it  is  not 
well  to  dwell  upon  it  in  such  an  exclusive  way  as  tends  to 
morbidness  and  sentimentality.  We  have  to  remember 
that  whatsoever  be  our  sorrow,  there  is  still  the  life  of  the 
world  which  may  need  us  and  such  gifts  of  healing  and 
service  as  we  perchance  can  bring.  We  should  live  so 
deeply  in  our  past  experience  as  to  learn  from  it  what  we 
may  —  to  learn  to  overcome  our  own  longing  by  a  trans- 
formation of  it  into  such  new  values  as  are  possible  only 
on  the  basis  of  the  past  experience  itself.  So  we  may  be 
as  "  one  new-born."  ^  Yet  to  attain  to  this  state  of  wis- 
dom, spirituality,  and  charity  is,  we  must  admit,  "to  go 
through  death  to  reach  one's  immortality." 

The  Opposition  between  the  Temporal  and  the 
Eternal.  —  The  solution  of  the  opposition  between  the 
temporal  and  the  eternal  seems  to  be  somewhat  as  follows  : 

1st.  We  must  change  our  notion  of  the  meaning  of 
time,  i.e.  we  must  discover  its  ultimate  and  essential 
meaning.  Time  is  not  a  fatal  series  of  happenings.  It  is 
a  teleological  process  whose  distinctions  of  past,  present, 
and  future  are  dependent  on  a  will  ever  seeking  after  an 
ideal  good,  hence  seeking  for  itself  more  self-expression, 
i.e.  seeking  a  series  of  novel  and  unique  deeds.  For 
this  reason,  it  is  quite  true,  as  the  ancient  philosopher  of 
Greece  said  of  the  temporal :  — 

*'  You  cannot  step  twice  into  the  same  stream." 
1  "In  seternam  renatus." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  243 

2d.  It  is  clear  that  it  is  not  altogether  the  individual 
finite  will  on  which  the  time-stream  depends.  While  the 
time  order  is  not  fatal,  for  it  expresses  the  purposes,  i.e.  is 
the  concrete  embodiment  of  the  striving  will,  yet  it  is  the 
expression  of  no  whim  or  personal  caprice  of  mine,  i.e.  of 
any  finite  individual  as  his  will  exists  at  any  actual  pass- 
ing moment.  For  in  our  lives  are  happenings  which  we 
do  not  will,  which  seem  to  us  irrational,  which  stifle  our 
dearest  desires,  and  put  out  the  light  of  our  brightest 
hopes.  The  time-stream  as  a  whole  expresses  a  Univer- 
sal Will  —  a  will,  however,  to  which  our  finite  wills  in 
their  deepest  desires  really  belong,  and  to  which  they  may 
become  consciously  united. 

"  Our  wills  are  ours,  we  know  not  how 
Our  wills  are  ours  to  make  them  Thine  " 

Thus  time  is  another  instance  of  the  interdependence  of 
the  individual  and  the  universal,  of  the  part  and  the 
whole. 

On  the  basis  of  our  own  experience,  it  seems  legitimate 
to  generalize  and  to  interpret  the  whole  temporal  process 
as  the  process  of  a  universal,  creative  will  which  incar- 
nates itself  in  individual  finite  wills.  Yet  those  wills,  in 
so  far  as  they  are  merely  natural  and  unconscious  pro- 
cesses, are  not  truly  embodiments  of  the  Divine  Will. 
For  it  is  the  obligation  of  these  finite  wills  to  consciously 
carry  out  the  meaning  of  the  universal  will  in  a  series  of 
unique  deeds.  In  this  accord  of  the  finite  and  particular 
with  the  infinite  and  universal  exists  at  once  the  duty  and 
the  essential  freedom  of  the  finite  wills.  It  gives  a 
glimpse,  also,  into  the  union  of  the  eternal  and  the  tem- 
poral. 

Such  a  duty  on  the  part  of  the  finite  must  imply  some 
insight  into  the  will  of  God :  it  implies,  i.e.,  a  "  visio  deiJ^ 
Yet  such  an  insight  for  the  finite  being  is  necessarily  frag- 
mentary :  he  cannot  grasp  the  time-process  as  a  whole ; 
hence  there  are  many  temporal  elements  whose  meaning 


244  THE    DRAMA    OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

he  is  not  able  to  interpret ;  he  does  not  see  their  place  in 
the  whole  process.  Taken  by  themselves,  they  may  even 
appear  to  him  irrational  and  evil.  Further,  this  insight 
into  the  significance  of  the  universal  will  is  a  growing 
insight  —  an  insight  ^Vhich  grows  with  the  individual's 
experience  in  so  far  as  he  at  each  step  is  loyal  to  bis  own 
highest  ideal.''  In  such  devotion  and  self-consecration 
the  finite  is  truly  in  touch  with  the  infinite.  The  tem- 
poral and  eternal  are  harmonized  and  united  when  man 
lives  his  concrete  daily  life  as  in  the  presence  of  God. 

The  prophet  and  religious  reformer  dreams  his  dream  of 
ideal  perfection  and  beatitude.  He  sees  his  vision  of  God 
and  of  a  new  world.  Then  he  comes  down  from  the 
Mount  of  Vision  to  embody  the  vision  in  a  plan  of 
individual  and  social  reform.  All  this  we  have  seen  in  our 
study  of  concrete  religious  experience.  The  great  group  of 
Prophets  of  Israel  are  a  notable  instance  of  it.  Jesus  and 
Paul,  Buddha,  Zoroaster,  St.  Francis,  Luther,  Savon- 
arola, and  St.  Theresa  are  other  instances. 

^^  Where  there  is  no  vision  the  people  perish."  But  this 
process  is  no  mere  rhythm  or  alternation  of  vision  and 
acting.  No,  the  deeply  religious  man  lives  as  in  the  con- 
tinual and  persistent  light  of  the  eternal  ideal;  that  is, 
in  the  constant  presence  of  God.  It  has  become  the  habit 
of  his  life.  It  requires  no  great  crises  for  its  actualization. 
It  shines  in  his  countenance  and  is  partially  expressed 
in  his  every  attitude  and  in  his  least  deed. 

The  life  in  time  is  a  striving  after  an  ideal  good ;  the 
essence  of  will  is  therefore  its  ideality.  The  essence  of 
religion  is  its  relation  to  a  beyond-world,  of  which  it  be- 
holds the  eternal  vision,  but  not  the  concrete  reality.  The 
aim  of  the  religious  consciousness,  therefore,  is  the  over- 
coming of  its  present  dissatisfaction ;  but  this  is  a  never- 
completed  task.  It  is,  i.e.,  a  temporal  process;  yet  in 
every  unique  temporal  deed  the  eternal  is  present,  and 
in  some  measure  expressed.  If  the  goal  of  the  religious 
consciousness  were  an  Arabian  paradise  of  mere  sensuous 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  245 

enjoyment,  as  the  dog  enjoys  lying  in  the  sunshine ;  or 
of  pure  emotion,  then  there  would  be  no  temporal  process 
concerned.  But  if  we  admit  the  will  activity,  we  forth- 
with admit,  in  the  religious  consciousness,  both  elements 
of  time  and  elements  of  dissatisfaction.  Our  study  of  the 
concrete  religious  consciousness  has  shown  that  the  reli- 
gious consciousness  has  not  reached  perfection  morally,  or 
aesthetically  even.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  however,  we  do 
not  admit  the  will  and  its  temporal  activity,  we  forthwith 
banish  purpose  and  significance  from  finite  life.  Yet  the 
religious  consciousness  knows  the  eternal  moment.  The 
experience  of  the  eternal  life  of  the  religious  conscious- 
ness implies  that  it  is,  then,  a  type  of  consciousness  which 
unifies  the  temporaL  It  is,  i.e.,  a  consciousness  which 
grasps  the  process,  so  far  as  its  significance  is  concerned, 
as  one  whole. 

The  Eternal  needs  the  temporal.  While  this  is  fairly 
clear  in  relation  to  those  essentially  ethical  types  of  re- 
ligions like  the  religion  of  Israel  and  Zoroastrianism,  it  is 
in  reality  no  less  true  of  the  more  mystical  religious  ex- 
perience. This  fact  our  study  of  concrete  religious  ex- 
perience has,  I  think,  clearly  shown.  The  oneness  with 
the  divine  which  is  the  goal  of  Orphism  is  dependent  on 
ascetic  disciplines  of  purity  and  self-control,  on  the  one 
hand,  and  on  practices  which  lead  to  states  of  ecstasy,  on 
the  other.  The  Nirvana  of  Buddhism  depends  on  a  way 
of  approach.  If  defined  as  pure  peace,  nothingness,  un- 
consciousness, it  is  reached  by  means  only  of  the  series  of 
trances  and  by  the  path  of  purity  or  way  of  salvation. 
If  defined  as  a  state  of  enlightenment,  self-renunciation 
and  self-control,  it  is  attained  only  through  the  practices 
of  overcoming  of  the  mutability  and  insatiability  of  the 
will.  The  heaven  of  the  Christian  mystic  requires  the 
temporal  for  its  realization  as  well  as  for  its  description. 
The  New  Jerusalem  of  the  Christian  mystics  is  defined 
only  by  means  of  its  contrast  with  temporal  dissatis- 
factions or  through  the  overcoming  of  these:  — 


246  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

"And  I  saw  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth,  for  the  first  heaven 
and  the  first  earth  are  passed  away;  and  the  sea  is  no  more,  .  .  . 
And  God  himself  shall  be  with  his  people  and  be  their  God  ;  and  He 
shall  wipe  away  every  tear  from  their  eyes,  and  death  shall  be  no  more, 
neither  shall  there  be  mourning  nor  crying  nor  pain,  any  more.  The 
first  things  are  passed  away.  .  .  . 

"And  the  leaves  of  the  tree  of  life  shall  be  for  the  healing  of  the 
nations.  And  there  shall  be  no  curse  any  more :  .  .  .  and  the  throne 
of  God  and  of  the  Lamb  shall  be  thereon:  and  his  servants  shall  do 
him  service;  and  they  shall  see  his  face.  .  .  .  And  there  shall  be 
night  no  more.  And  they  need  no  light  of  lamp,  neither  light  of  sim, 
for  the  Lord  shall  give  them  light.  .  .  ."  ^ 

"Hie  breve  vivitur,  hie  breve  plangitur,  hie  breve  fletur; 
Non  breve  vivere,  non  breve  plangere  retribueter ; 
O  retributio !  stat  brevis  actio,  vita  perennis ; 
O  retributio !  coelica  mansio  stat  lue  plenis ; 

**Nunc  tribulatio;  tunc  recreatio,  sceptra,  coronae; 
Time  nova  gloria  pectora  sobria  clarificabit, 
Solvet  enigmata,  veraque  sabbata  continuabit 

"Patria  splendida,  tarraque  florida,  libera  spinis, 
Danda  fidelibus,  est  ibi  civibus,  hie  peregrinis. 

"  Pax  sine  crimine,  pax  sine  turbine,  pax  sine  rixa, 
Meta  laboribus,  atque  tumultibus  anchora  fixa."  ' 

As  a  final  summing  up  of  this  whole  discussion,  we  may- 
say  that  the  eternal  peace  and  beatitude  which  religion 
seeks,  and  which  the  religious  consciousness  finds,  is 
absolutely  dependent  on  a  way  of  life  in  a  temporal  world. 
And  this  is  equally  true  whether  the  religious  experience 
in  question  is  individual  or  social.  For  instance,  the 
Zion  to  be,  which  was  the  ideal  of  the  religious  conscious- 
ness of  the  Hebrew  prophets,  was  a  social  experience. 

"The  wilderness  and  solitary  place  shall  be  glad  and  the  desert 
shall  rejoice  and  blossom  as  the  rose.  .  .  .  They  shall  see  the  glory 
of  the  Lord,  the  excellency  of  our  God.  .  .  .     Say  to  them  that  are 

1  "Revelation  of  St.  John,"  Chaps.  21,  22. 

2  From  Hymn  "Hora  Novissima"  of  Bernard  de  Morlas,  monk  of 
Cluni.     Translated  Hymn,  "Celestial  Country,"  by  Dr.  J.  M.  Neale. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  247 

of  a  fearful  heart,  Be  strong,  fear  not.  .  .  .  Behold  your  God  will 
come  and  save  you.  Then  the  eyes  of  the  blind  shall  be  opened,  and 
the  ears  of  the  deaf  shall  be  unstopped.  Then  shall  the  lame  man 
run  as  an  hart,  and  the  tongue  of  the  dumb  shall  sing,  for  in  the  wilder- 
ness shall  waters  break  out,  and  streams  in  the  desert.  ...  And  an 
high  way  shall  he  there,  and  a  way,  and  it  shall  he  called  the  way  of  holi- 
ness .  .  .  and  the  ransomed  of  the  Lord  shall  return  and  come  with 
singing  unto  Zion;  and  everlasting  joy  shnll  be  upon  their  heads: 
they  shall  obtain  gladness  and  joy  and  sorrow  and  sighing  shall  flee 
away."  ^ 

Thus  does  the  poetic  imagination  body  forth  the  ideal 
of  the  religious  consciousness ;  thus  does  it  make  manifest 
through  the  symbolism  of  poetry  the  union  of  religion's 
eternal  and  temporal  forms. 

1  Isaiah  35 


"Let  us  be  like  a  bird  a  moment  lighted 
Upon  the  twig  that  swings. 
He  feels  it  sway,  but  sings  on  unaffrighted, 
Knowing  he  hath  his  wings." 

—  Victor  Hugo. 

"This  is  my  prayer  to  thee,  my  lord  —  strike,  strike  at  the  root  of 

pining  in  my  heart. 
Give  me  the  strength  lightly  to  bear  my  joys  and  sorrows. 
Give  me  the  strength  to  make  my  love  fruitful  in  service 
Give  me  the  strength  never  to  disown  the  poor  or  bend  my  knees  before 

insolent  might. 
Give  me  the  strength  to  raise  my  mind  high  above  daily  trifles 
And  give  me  the  strength  to  surrender  my  strength  to  thy  will  with 

love." 

—  Rabindranath  Tagore. 


CHAPTER  V  {Continued) 

The  Way  of  Life  —  Its  Forms 

Part  II.     The  Static  and  Dynamic 


In  the  last  section  we  considered  the  opposition  between 
the  temporal  and  the  eternal  as  determining  a  form  of 
the  rehgious  consciousness.  We  saw  that  the  statement : 
The  world  is  in  time  —  reduces  to  this :  Time  is  a  form  of 
the  will  because  of  the  will's  ideality  and  its  practical 
activity.  We  saw  that  the  fact  of  the  temporal  aspect 
of  the  religious  consciousness,  as  of  the  world,  does  not 
exclude  the  fact  that  this  consciousness  is  also  an  eternal 
consciousness,  or  that  the  universe  as  an  whole  is  eternal. 

From  the  consideration  of  the  temporal-eternal  form 
we  readily  pass  over  to  other  forms  in  which  the  paradox 
of  the  religious  consciousness  expresses  itself;  namely, 
first  the  form  which  we  may  call  the  static-dynamic 
form  and,  secondly  the  one-many  form.  Shelley  has 
suggested  the  interrelatedness  of  these  various  forms  in 
his  lines :  — 

"The  many  change;  the  one  remains." 

Let  us  consider  first  the  form  whose  antithesis  we  have 
expressed  in  the  terms  much  in  use  at  present  —  viz.  the 
''  static-dynamic' '  As  we  begin  to  consider  this  form,  its 
relation  to  the  temporal-eternal  form  which  we  have 
just  analyzed  at  once  appears.  For  correlative  with  the 
pervasiveness  of  the  time  consciousness  is  the  fact  of 
change:  ''All  things  move.''  ''You  cannot  step  twice 
into  the  same  stream."  Or  again,  we  have  said  — time 
is  a  form  of  the  will,  but  it  is  the  character  of  the  will  to 

249 


250  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

be  restless,  mutable,  dynamic  like  the  changing  moment 
of  the  time-stream  itself,  and  whether  we  will  it  or  not, 
the  facts  of  experience  point  to  the  conclusion  that  we 
live  in  a  changing  world.  Not  only  is  the  sensational 
life,  as  one  might  expect,  in  a  constant  state  of  flux,  but 
in  the  inner  psychic  life  as  well  there  is  the  change  of  mood 
and  purpose,  the  passing  of  memory,  interest,  and  desire ; 
yes,  even  there  in  the  citadel  of  the  spirit  —  even  the  very 
^'  self  ^'  of  man  (as  we  shall  see  more  fully  in  the  next  sec- 
tion) is  a  restless,  changing,  fluctuating  thing;  while  the 
external  events  of  our  conscious  life,  as  an  whole,  unroll 
themselves  and  pass  before  our  eyes  like  the  pictures  of  a 
cinematograph.  Let  one,  for  example,  read  over  a  bundle 
of  old  letters  covering  from  ten  to  twenty  years  of  his  own 
life  and  note  the  changes  which  they  reveal.  And  what 
is  true  of  the  individual  story  appears  again  in  the  pages 
of  history.  Where  are  now  the  noble  names  of  history? 
What  has  become  of 

"The  glory  that  was  Greece! 
The  grandeur  that  was  Rome !  " 

Or,  let  one  observe  the  transformations  which  take  place, 
in  comparatively  few  years,  in  one  of  the  modern  cities 
of  our  western  world.  Let  him  note  the  change  in  the 
character  of  the  population  and  in  the  type  of  buildings, 
in  a  given  section  of  such  a  city.  We  are  driven,  in- 
evitably, to  one  conclusion  —  we  live  in  a  world  of  change, 
of  movement;  in  a  restless,  dynamic,  dramatic  kind  of 
world. 

The  religious  consciousness,  however,  has  always 
emphasized  the  notion  of  permanence  and  stability,  the 
unchanging  and  everlasting  aspect  of  the  religious  life; 
and  it  has  often  made  reply  to  the  dynamic  view  of  the 
world  that  all  change  is  but  appearance;  reality  as  an 
whole  is  permanent  and  static,  and  though  the  will  itself 
be  restless,  yet  the  goal  of  the  will  is  perfection,  peace, 
completion,  a  consciousness  for  which  no  change,  no 
''other"  can  exist,  which  is,  therefore,  static.     It  is  the 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  251 

one  beyond  the  many,  the  quiet  beyond  all  restlessness, 
"  the  eternal  sea  of  being  "  which  as  the  mystics  say  is  one 
and  unchanging  for  all  the  ebb  and  flow  of  the  tides,  the 
coming  and  going  of  ocean  currents,  the  restless  play  of  the 
billows.  God,  the  highest  concept  of  religion,  is  described 
as  the  Perfect  and  Absolute,  the  One  with  whom  is  no 
variableness,  neither  shadow  of  turning ;  and  the  universe 
itself  is  held  to  be  complete. 

"The  heavens  shall  wax  old  as  a  garment, 
As  a  vesture  shalt  thou  change  them  and  they  shall  be  changed. 
But  thou  art  the  same  and  thy  days  shall  know  no  end." 

(Psalm  102.) 
"Whither  shall  I  go  from  thy  spirit 
Or  whither  shall  I  flee  from  thy  presence? 
If  I  ascend  up  into  heaven,  thou  art  there. 
If  I  make  my  bed  in  hell,  behold  thou  art  there ! " 

(Psalm  139.) 

Or,  again :  — 

"Our  hearts  are  restless  till  they  find  rest  in  thee." 

"  St.  Augustine's  Confessions." 

Thus  the  religious  consciousness  has  ever  sought  for 
itself  peace,  rest,  and  security  in  contemplation  and 
beatific  vision  far  away  from  the  world  of  change  and 
the  transitoriness  of  the  finite.  It  is  true,  as  St.  Gregory 
says :  ^'Life  is  a  smile  that  flutters  on  our  lips,  a  shadow, 
an  appearance,  a  dew-drop,  a  breath,  a  dream,  a  torrent 
which  flows  away."  Yet  this  very  instability  of  human 
beings,  thanks  to  the  blessed  vision  of  God,  is  in  the 
perfection  of  his  decrees,  for  by  it  we  are  compelled  to 
seek  after  solid  and  unchangeable  good." 

To  the  religious  consciousness,  then,  change  is  either 
an  evil  which  belongs  to  Maia  —  to  the  world  of  mere 
appearance  and  unreality;  or  change  which  appears  as 
genuine  change  is  in  reality  simply  eternal  recurrence. 
What  has  been  will  be  again.  It  is  the  same  old  story 
endlessly  repeated,  hence  without  significance  or  value. 
The  finite,  temporal  world  is  an  evil,  therefore,  which 


252  THE   DRAMA   OP  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

the  religious  consciousness  must  either  ignore,  or  over- 
come by  renouncing  it.  It  is  true  that  man  is  frail, 
temporal,  and  finite,  that  the  generations  pass  and  are 
no  more  seen.  Yet  in  relation  to  the  unchanging,  the 
One,  the  Eternal,  all  mutability  is,  after  all,  but  appear- 
ance. The  Real,  above  all  change,  may  be  sought,  and 
if  rightly  sought  will  surely  be  found.  This,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  is  the  attitude  of  Brahminism,  of  Buddhism, 
and  also  of  Christian  monasticism. 

And  yet,  equally  true  it  is  that  the  religious  conscious- 
ness itself  is  active,  dynamic,  changing.  We  note  this 
in  the  impulse,  often  fanatical,  to  make  converts  which 
is  found  in  most  religions,  notably,  in  mediaeval  days, 
in  Mohammedanism.  This  dynamic  spirit  appears  in 
Christianity.  It  is  found  in  the  spirit  of  romance  and 
adventure  in  the  Crusades ;  in  the  missionary  movement 
of  modern  Christian  sects,  and  in  religious  reformers  of 
all  ages.  It  is  exemplified  in  the  fighting  spirit  of  those 
religions,  like  Zoroastrianism,  which  emphasize  the 
dualism  of  the  universe  (good  and  evil  principles) ;  and 
in  intensely  ethical  religions  like  the  religion  of  the  Hebrew 
Prophets. 

As  it  appears,  the  impulse  to  change  in  the  religious 
consciousness  seems,  indeed,  a  form  of  an  universal  human 
tendency  which  we  might  call,  possibly,  in  one  of  its 
phases  at  least,  the  nurturing  tendency  —  the  tendency  to 
make  grow  or  redeem ;  and,  as  a  means  to  this  end,  the  im- 
pulse to  bestow  upon  others  the  good  we  ourselves  possess. 
We  note  this  tendency  in  the  animal  world  as  well  as  in 
the  human  race.  It  reaches  the  acme  in  those  persons, 
found  in  most  historical  religions,  e.g.  Horus,  Buddha, 
Mithra,  Jesus,  who  are  acknowledged  as  the  heroes, 
benefactors,  redeemers,  and  saviours  of  their  people. 

The  dynamic  element,  again,  is  clearly  to  be  seen  in 
the  tendency  to  change  of  religious  opinions  and  of  reli- 
gious institutions.  To  be  sure,  there  is  an  equally  strong 
tendency  for  these  outer  forms  of  religion  to  become  fixed 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  253 

and  static.  We  have  already  studied  these  tendencies 
of  the  religious  consciousness  in  the  opposition  between 
the  inner  and  the  outer  religious  life.  We  saw  that 
while  a  conservative  religion  cherishes  the  institutions 
and  religious  symbols  of  the  past  and  seeks  to  keep  them 
unchanging,  yet  to  an  enhghtened  and  ethical  religious 
consciousness  these  outer  forms  seem  too  often  like  ^4dols 
of  the  tribe/'  mere  ^^ ghosts/'  or  ''half -gods/'  which  have 
lost  their  significance  for  the  moral  consciousness  of  the 
time. 

Now  what  we  can  logically  mean  by  ''change"  or 
"movement/'  it  may  not  be  as  easy  to  determine  as 
appears  to  a  superficial  view  of  the  matter.  Yet  one 
thing  is  clear,  for  morality  and  for  a  religion  which  seeks 
to  be  ethical,  change  must  exist;  that  is,  be  a  reality. 
If  change  is  only  appearance,  then  there  is  no  value  in 
moral  struggle  and  effort  and  man  is  not  really  free.  All 
this  we  considered  in  the  section  on  Grace  and  Merit. 
If  change  is  simply  eternal  recurrence,  then  nothing 
really  happens,  and  there  is  no  novelty,  no  imiqueness, 
no  significance  in  our  world. 

"And  fear  not  lest  Existence  closing  your 
Account,  and  mine,  should  know  the  like  no  more; 
The  Eternal  Saki  from  that  Bowl  has  pour'd 
Millions  of  Bubbles  like  us,  and  will  pour. 

*'  When  You  and  I  behind  the  Veil  are  past, 
Oh  but  the  long  long  while  the  World  shall  last, 
Which  of  our  Coming  and  Departure  heeds 
As  the  Sev'n  Seas  should  heed  a  pebble-cast. 

"  A  Moment's  Halt  —  a  momentary  taste 
Of  Being  from  the  Well  amid  the  Waste  — 
And  Lo !  —  the  phantom  Caravan  has  reached 
The  Nothing  it  set  out  from  —  Oh,  make  haste  I" 

But  the  moral  consciousness  demands  that  the  change 
which  it  brings  at  least  shall  be  not  repetition  or  appear- 
ance, but  something  genuinely  novel  and  unique.  It 
demands  that  its  world  shall  be  dramatic  and  dynamic, 


254  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

that  experience  shall  be  a  call  to  adventure  in  a  world 
which  through  human  endeavor  constantly  grows  more 
perfect  as  it  progresses  toward  the  goal,  but  which  will 
not  progress  without  hiunan  effort.  For  surely,  the 
world  as  we  know  it  is  very  evil,  abounding  in  injustices 
and  misery,  and  if  we  may  by  no  possibility  really  alter 
it,  there  is  ground  for  an  attitude  of  despair.  If  reality 
is  static  —  ^^a  block  universe"  —  it  may  give  us  a  good 
excuse  for  taking  ^' a  moral  holiday  ";  but  a  static  universe 
destroys  the  freedom  and  creativeness  of  individuals  by 
taking  away  all  value  from  their  efforts  and  their  aims. 
It  leads  to  an  ultimate  pessimism  and  nihilism.  This 
appears  to  be  the  real  groimd  of  William  James's  so 
strenuous  onslaught  on  Absolute  Idealism. 

The  active  attitude,  devoted  to  change  and  growth,  is 
especially  characteristic  of  our  time.  Even  the  supreme 
object  of  religious  consciousness  is  sometimes  defined  in 
terms  of  change,  as  a  '' growing  God"  ^  or  "God  as  pro- 
cess." Individualism  is  supposed  to  be  a  characteristic 
movement  of  the  present  age.  Individualism  certainly 
is  not  necessarily  connected  with  the  dynamic,  but  the 
individualism  of  the  day  is,  I  think,  so  associated;  for 
the  individualism  of  our  day  differs  from  that  which 
appeared  during  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
The  individualism  of  the  age  which  rediscovered  the 
principle  of  growth  in  things  —  the  age  of  Hamann  and 
Herder  —  emphasized  "uniqueness  of  quality."  In  the 
time  of  the  Romantic  movement  in  Germany,  every  man 
was  a  genius.  The  Christianity  of  Jesus  taught  that  man 
is  a  child  of  God.  (Matthew  5:  9,  45;  Matt.  7:  11.) 
Christian  Monasticism  took  up  this  doctrine,  and  in  the 
monasteries  where  distinctions  of  birth  were  levelled,  ap- 
plied it  to  every  man.  Every  man,  even  the  sinner,  if  re- 
pentant, is  a  citizen  of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  Again,  the 
political  individuaUsm  of  the  American  and  French  Rev- 
olutions emphasized  the  unique  value  of  each  individual 

^  Professor  Foster  and  the  Chicago  School. 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  255 

in  relation  to  the  State.  But  in  modern  individualism  we 
mark  a  change  of  note.  It  is  not  so  much  uniqueness  of 
quality  as  individual  efficiency  that  is  emphasized.  The 
words  of  the  day/  as  we  have  remarked  before,  are  Evolu- 
tion, Growth,  Progress,  Efficiency.  The  individual,  that 
is,  must  prove  his  uniqueness  and  worth  by  accomplishing 
something.  This  attitude  is  really,  I  think,  at  the  bottom 
of  the  present  demand  for  vocational  training.  The 
doctrine  of  efficiency  is  not  necessarily  either  altruistic  or 
egoistic.  The  ''  activity ''  of  the  present  day  is,  generally 
speaking,  the  demand  for  self-expression,  for  abundant  life 
and  power.  It  is  essentially  a  strenuous  attitude.  Its 
fundamental  aim  is  to  do  something  "  big  '^  or  worth 
while ;  to  build  a  railroad  or  work  a  mine,  to  develop  a 
new  country.  In  the  more  earnest  spirits,  it  is  very 
often  directed  towards  the  amelioration  of  social  and 
industrial  conditions.  It  aims  to  effect  changes  in  legis- 
lation, and  in  the  working  principles  of  government  and 
of  economics,  finding  in  these  forms  of  man's  environment 
the  ^'causes"  of  his  unhappiness  and  sin.  Modern  as 
this  doctrine  appears  to  be  when  it  comes  to  us  with  the 
new  names  of  Pragmatism  and  Socialism,  yet  it  is  in 
reality  no  merely  modern  tendency.  The  opposition 
between  the  static  and  dynamic  has  appeared  again  and 
again  in  old-world  philosophies  and  religions.  Only, 
to-day,  it  comes  to  us  with  this  new  note,  i.e.  with  a 
social  emphasis  which  is  a  product  of  the  newly  awakened 
social  consciousness  seeking  to  improve  its  external  con- 
ditions, with  the  hope  that  by  such  means  it  may  bring 
about  a  moral  regeneration  of  the  world.  But  especially 
characteristic  of  modern  life  is  its  restlessness .^  It  must 
be  moving  —  ^'on  the  go,"  as  the  slang  phrase  has  it. 
In  this  dynamic  universe,  then,  something  is  always 
happening.     The  world  moves;    at  every  instant  some- 

*  See  Chapter  IV  (Continued) . 

2  Over  the  door  of  an  automobile  factory  in  Boston,  this  sign  ap- 
pears :  '*  The  World  in  motion  —  true  to  life." 


256  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

thing  new  appears  above  the  horizon.  Swept  along  in 
the  mad  whirl  of  existence,  in  the  pursuit  of  novel  excite- 
ments, carried  away  by  every  "  wind  of  doctrine,"  or  lost 
bewildered  in  a  sea  of  doubt,  blind  even  in  its  zeal  for 
social  reform,  so  restlessly  eager  is  the  life  of  our  day  that 
it  finds  no  occasion  for  brooding  reflection,  no  time  for 
the  deepening  of  the  roots  of  experience.  In  consequence 
there  is  little  profundity  to  the  inner  life,  no  experience  of 
"the  warfare  of  the  spirif ;  while  much  of  the  sense  of 
the  mysterious  beauty  and  wonder  of  life  seems  to  have 
departed  from  our  midst.  Only  here  and  there  some  lonely 
and  isolated  spirit,  some  artist  or  poet  perhaps,  still  holds 
aloft  the  torch.  For  it  is  a  man-made  universe,  and  there 
is  nothing  which  the  "will  to  live"  may  not  accomplish. 
Already  it  is  working  to  wholly  stamp  out  disease,  poverty, 
and  accident.  It  is  bringing  in  the  old  Greek  attitude 
which  held  to  the  joy  of  life,  to  "living  in  the  whole  of 
social  relationships,"  in  the  normaUty  of  the  present  life 
without  reference  to  a  "beyond  world."  ^  If  the  present- 
day  point  of  view  finds  more  value  in  the  present  earthly 
life  than  did  our  fathers,  its  ideas  about  God  are  uncertain 
and  its  hope  of  immortality  weak. 

If  we  accept  this  view  as  final,  i.e.  of  the  universe  as  a 
whole  as  a  changing  process,  one  thing  is  clear :  for  the 
religious  consciousness  there  is  no  one  supreme  Being; 
or  else,  the  very  fact  of  change  itself  is  the  one  reality.^ 
The  question  may  be  asked,  if  there  is  no  supreme,  ab- 
solute Being,  have  we  a  right  to  call  the  fact  of  change 
by  the  name  of  growth  and  development  (a  "growing 
God"),  as  this  modern  philosophy  does?  These  concepts 
imply  at  least  direction,  and  how  are  we  to  know,  if  there 
is  no  absolute  goal  to  serve  as  a  standard  of  measure- 
ment, that  the  direction  which  things  actually  move  in 
is  surely  a  direction  of  value?    Inferences  drawn  from 

1  See  Professor  Patten,  "Social  Basis  of  Religion.'* 

2  "The  deepest  truth  known  to  me  is  that  this  my  present  truth  will 
change,"  said  Friedrich  Sehlegel. 


THE   WAY  OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  257 

the  *' sampling '^  of  our  past  experience,  together  with  the 
fact  of  ^' workability"  can  be  our  only  guides,  and  these 
cannot  be  infallible  ones.  A  world  of  growth  ^  merely , 
is  at  best  a  world  of  relative  values  only. 

Hence  the  religious  consciousness,  which  demands 
absolute  values,  returns  once  more  to  the  static,  the 
perfect,  the  absolute  for  which  there  is  no  ''more,"  no 
''beyond,"  no  "other."  It  turns  to  a  "Nirvana"  of 
incomparable  security  which  is  beyond  all  change  and 
all  desire,  where  there  is  no  more  sorrow,  no  more  in- 
carnations, no  death,  no  temporal  existence.  It  turns 
to  the  heavenly  Jerusalem  of  the  Apocalypse  of  John. 

"And  I  saw  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth,  for  the  first  heaven  and 
the  first  earth  are  passed  away ;  and  the  sea  is  no  more.  .  .  .  And 
death  shall  be  no  more ;  neither  shall  there  be  mourning,  nor  crying 
nor  pain  any  more :  the  first  things  are  passed. 

"And  there  shall  be  no  night  there;  and  they  need  no  candle, 
neither  light  of  the  sun;  for  the  Lord  giveth  them  light:  and  they 
shall  reign  for  ever  and  ever."  (Revelation  21 : 1,  4 ;  22 :  5.) 

The  fundamental  objection  to  the  static  conception, 
however,  it  is  hard  to  overcome.  This  objection  is  that  a 
static  view  of  the  universe  takes  away  reality  and  ethical 
significance  from  finite  existence.  It  seems  to  leave 
man  without  freedom,  initiative,  or  power  to  work  changes 
in  his  world.  And  this  his  outer,  social  world  as  well  as 
the  world  of  his  own  inner  life,  seem  to  him  often  and 
often  in  such  desperate  need  of  change.  Hence  espe- 
cially, the  problem  of  evil  drives  one  back  to  the  dynamic 
view,  to  the  "pragmatism"  and  "meliorism"  of  James 
and  of  the  modern  humanists  and  social  economists  and 
reformers. 

"The  dynamic"  is  a  popular  notion  and  a  much-used 
term  in  our  day,  even  while  those  who  use  it  are  not 
perhaps  very  clear  as  to  its  meaning.  Evidently,  the 
concept  "dynamic"  contains  a  deeper  meaning  than 
that  of  mere  change.     It  means  an  energy  that  is  efficient, 

*  I.e.  growth  as  change  simply, 
s 


258  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

that  genuinely  accomplishes  something;  and  further, 
it  is  implied  that  this  something  is  worth  while.  Our 
age,  as  we  have  already  noted,  is  characterized  by  rest- 
lessness and  the  longing  for  change.^  As  opposed  to  in- 
difference and  sloth,  almost  any  form  of  activity  seems 
desirable ;  and  in  every  field  —  in  education,  in  hterature, 
in  religion  and  philosophy  —  is  the  tendency  to  emphasize 
the  value  of  activity.  For  instance,  self-activity  is  the 
ideal  of  the  new  education,  and  efficiency  the  ideal  in 
business,  in  politics,  and  practical  life.  Original  energy 
is  the  ground  of  reality,  in  various  modern  forms  of  phi- 
losophy.2  We  note  it  again  in  the  activity  for  social  re- 
form in  religious  organizations ;  in  a  demand  for  a  recon- 
struction of  the  social  world  as  the  main  end  of  religion,^ 
ix,  a  building  up  of  the  city  of  God  on  earth  instead  of 
the  eternal  attitude  towards  a  heavenly  city  or  ^^  beyond 
world  "  characteristic  of  some  types  of  ancient  and  me- 
diaeval reUgion. 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  the  roots  of  this  opposition 
between  the  static  and  the  dynamic  in  religion  are  to  be 
found  in  temperament,  and  especially  arise  out  of  the 
temperamental  difference  between  man  and  woman. 
Women,  it  is  said,  are  conservative  and  loyal  to  the  old 
forms  of  religion,  while  men  are  active  and  grow  im- 
patient of  the  old,  which  they  seek  to  change  and  reform. 
Modern  church  congregations,  it  is  held,  exemplify  this 
fact,  for  they  are  largely  made  up  of  women;  while  in 
the  outer  world,  men,  though  greatly  absorbed  in  business 
activities,  are  quite  as  interested  as  women  in  social  and 
ethical  movements.     Professor   Starbuck  in  his   ^'Psy- 

^  Note  the  signs  of  unrest  in  Europe  and  Asia  and  the  problems 
which  are  disturbing  every  country  there. 

2  Reality,  as  defined  by  the  latest  metaphysical  doctrine,  **is  a 
center  from  which  worlds  shoot  out.  ...  It  is  not  a  thing,  but  a 
continuity  of  shooting.  God,  thus  defined,  has  nothing  of  the  ready- 
made.  He  is  unceasing  life,  action,  freedom."  Henri  Bergson, 
"Creative  Evolution." 

» E.g.,  Professor  Patten,  ^'The  Social  Basis  of  Religion." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS  FORMS  259 

chology  of  Religious  Experience/'  based  on  a  study  of 
conversion  cases,  emphasizes  the  point  that  in  respect 
to  the  emotional  life,  the  emotions  of  men  are  more  con- 
centrated and  acute,  those  of  women  more  diffused. 
Hence  in  an  emotional  crisis,  a  man  will,  so  to  speak, 
grasp  at  any  relief  in  sight  as  an  outlet  for  the  emotions, 
and  when  the  crisis  is  past  and  the  emotion  has  cooled, 
will  go  on  to  new  experiences  and  new  aims  which  have 
intervened  and  driven  out  the  old;  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  woman  could  face  the  inevitable  necessity,  but 
uncertainty  and  change  wear  out  her  life  and  break  her 
heart,  for  she  is  loyal  to  the  old,  which  has  seemed  to  her 
of  supreme  value.^  No  doubt  this  difference  in  attitude 
is  in  part  a  matter  of  temperament.  Since  human  nature 
may  always  be  divided  into  two  classes  —  that  of  the 
radical  and  that  of  the  conservative.  And  no  doubt  men 
and  women  differ  in  their  emotional  attitudes  and  often 
fail  because  of  this  difference  to  understand  one  another 
—  a  failure  which  gives  rise  to  many  an  heartrending 
tragedy.^ 

And  no  doubt  this  antithesis  between  the  static  and 
dynamic  in  religious  experience  —  an  experience  which 
after  all  is  the  experience  of  men  and  women  —  is  in  part 
temperamental.  Yet  I  think  the  deeper  motive,  logically 
speaking,  and  a  more  general  way  of  expressing  the  matter, 
lies  in  the  distinction  between  religion  and  morality; 
hence  we  are  back  at  the  old  problem  of  our  opening 

1  Starbuck  finds  in  this  fact  of  the  different  types  of  emotion  the 
reason  for  the  difference  which  his  cases  seem  to  show  in  the  Conversion 
experience  of  men  and  women.  Professor  Starbuck' s  •*  Psychology 
of  Religious  Experience." 

2  Nietzsche  says  somewhere,  **  The  same  emotions  are  different  in  their 
rhythm  for  man  and  woman,  therefore  men  and  women  never  cease  to 
misunderstand  one  another." 

See  for  an  illustration  of  this  difference  of  emotional  attitude,  the 
sad  love  story  of  Mary  WoUstonecraft  and  Imlay.  Life  of  Mary 
Wollstonecraft  in  ^'Famous  Women  Series";  and  John  Masefield, 
^'Daffodil  Fields";  Thomas  Hardy  in  "Two  on  a  Tower,"  and 
others  of  his  novels. 


260  THE    DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

chapter,  which  is,  essentially,  the  problem  between 
religion  and  morality;  or  between  religion  in  the  par- 
ticular sense  and  the  ethical  type  of  religion. 

Now,  undoubtedly,  religion  has  its  static  or  cyclic 
forms.  These  we  have  already  considered  in  a  preceding 
chapter  (Chapter  IV  (Continiied) :  The  Inner  and  the 
Outer). 

The  Structural  Aspect  or  Static  Forms  of 
Religious  Experience.  —  Such  structural  forms  of 
religious  experience  are  either  objective  or  subjective. 

Objective  Forms.  —  I.  Under  the  head  of  objective, 
we  may  group :  — 

(1)  The  fixed  religious  habits. 

(2)  The  forms  of  institutional  religion  which  are  relatively  per- 

manent, such  as  creeds  and  rites,  ceremonies  of  propitiation, 
etc.,  which,  while  they  change,  no  doubt,  as  to  their  inner 
significance,  are  in  external  form  as  old  as  religion  itself. 

(3)  The  "church"  as  the  social  organization  and  expression  of 

spiritual  solidarity,  and  as  the  storehouse  of  religious  ex- 
perience. 

(4)  The  form  of  the  hierarchy  which  is  found  in  ancient  Egypt 

and  in  Persia,  in  Jewish  religion  and  even  in  Buddhism; 
and  in  Roman  Catholicism  to-day. 
(6)  Permanent  types  and  levels  of  character,  such  as  the  worldly- 
minded    and    the  saved,  saints  and  ordinary  people,   the 
clergy  and  the  laity ;  while  these  classes,  again,  could  be 
subdivided  into  individual  varieties. 
(6)  Again,  universally  in  religious  experience  there  appears  to  be 
(if  we  omit  the  active  mediating  process)  a  kind  of  dualistic 
structure  exemplified    for  instance   by  the   opposition  be- 
tween :  — 
(a)  Darkness  and  Light,  a  contrast  which  is  emphasized  in 
the  Gospel  of  St.  John  and  in  the  two  principles  of 
Zoroastrianism. 
(6)  Or  the  antithesis  in  Greek  religion  between  the  under 
world  and  the  bright  Olj^mpian  abode  of  the  gods. 

(c)  Or  the  contrast  between  "  this  age "  and  "  the  age  to 

come  "  of  Apocryphal  writers. 

(d)  Or  the  antithesis  in  the  teachings  of  Jesus  between  the 

kingdom  of  this  world  which  is  given  over  to  worldly 
cares  and  ambitions,  and  the  kingdom  of  God,  whose 
principles  are  humility,  love,  and  self-sacrifice. 


THE   WAY   OF  LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  261 

(e)  Or,  again,  the  antithesis  between  the  natural  man  and 
the  spiritual  man  of  which  the  Pauline  letters  and 
later  Christian  writers  have  so  much  to  tell  us ;  which 
motive  appears  again  in  Christian  monasticism  and 
in  Christian  hymnology. 

(/)  Or,  again,  in  the  contrast  between  the  two  cities  —  the 
city  of  God  and  the  city  of  Satan,  on  which  opposition 
St.  Augustine  bases  his  work  "Ci vitas  Dei." 

ig)  Or,  once  more,  the  antithesis  between  heaven  and  hell 
of  Protestantism. 

(h)  In  Buddhism,  we  find  this  dualistic  structure  in  the  con- 
cept of  the  endless  cycle  of  rebirths  in  contrast  with 
the  state  of  enlightenment  wherein  ignorance  has  been 
overcome  and  desire  renounced. 

(i)  This  dualistic  form  appears  in  religious  philosophy  as 
the  opposition  between  the  one  and  the  many  — 
world  of  mutability  and  the  world  of  the  one  —  the 
permanent;  the  world  of  time  and  of  appearance, 
and  the  world  of  eternity  and  reality. 

(7)  Certain  beliefs  and  myths  and  the  rites  and  observances  based 

upon  them  seem  fairly  universal,  and  so  might  be  considered 
to  constitute  a  relatively  permanent  structure  of  religious 
experience.  For  example,  the  myth  of  the  death  and 
resurrection  of  a  nature  god  —  following  the  natural  rhythmic 
process  of  the  death  of  vegetation  in  autumn,  and  its  revi- 
val in  spring  (noted  in  Chapter  I).  This  myth  appears, 
according  to  Frazer,  amongst  savage  people,  and  is  found 
in  the  historic  religions  of  Egypt,  Babylonia,  Greece,  and  in 
the  Mithra  cult  of  Persia.  It  is  also  found  in  its  spiritualized 
form  in  Christianity. 

(8)  Further,  we  may  note  as  structural  the  mystery  cults,  —  the 

rites  of  communion  and  of  purification  which  grew  out  of 
the  above  belief;  and  finally,  prayer,  conmiunion  and 
sacrifice  in  some  form  seem  universal,  permanent,  and,  as 
we  may  say,  structural  elements  of  religion. 

Subjective  Forms.  —  II.  The  static  or  structural 
forms  of  subjective  religious  experience  would  fall,  on 
analysis,  under  those  fundamental  attitudes  which  appear 
in  the  varieties  of  religious  experience  already  considered 
in  previous  chapters.  As  I  have  already  considered 
rather  carefully  some  of  the  forms  which  appear  in  this 
problem  of  the  static  and  the  dynamic  in  Chapter  IV 


262  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

(on  the  inner  and  the  outer,  and  on  the  relation  of  free- 
dom and  necessity),  I  propose  in  this  section  to  consider 
the  problem  in  another  way;  that  is,  in  relation  to  the 
question  of  the  efficacy  of  prayer.  This,  also,  is  worth 
doing  for  its  own  sake,  since  in  prayer  we  come  upon  that 
which  is  usually  considered  the  innermost  essence  of  the 
religious  life.  Hence  if  we  can  determine  whether  prayer 
is  dynamic  or  static,  we  shall  have  some  ground  for 
determining  the  nature  of  religious  experience  as  an  whole 
in  this  regard. 

II 

Prayer  and  its  Office 

Prayer  I  have  just  mentioned  as  one  of  the  cyclic  and 
static  forms  of  religious  experience.  By  this  statement, 
however,  it  will  be  objected  that  one  can  mean  only  the 
rite  of  prayer,  or  formal,  external  prayer,  and  in  such 
forms  we  do  not  discover  the  essence  of  prayer.  And, 
further,  it  will  be  objected  that  prayer  is  not  static,  for 
prayer,  if  it  is  to  be  of  any  value,  must  be  efficacious. 
Some  result,  that  is,  must  come  to  pass  through  prayer 
which  would  not  have  happened  otherwise.  But  if 
prayer  causes  novel  changes,  then,  surely  prayer  is 
effective,  dynamic,  non-static. 

The  Dynamic  and  Static  in  Relation  to  Prayer.  — ■ 
But  to  the  modern  mind  to  make  prayer  dynamic  seems 
to  be  to  make  prayer  miraculous,  and  this  is  to  contradict 
the  dictum  of  modern  science,  which  attributes  all  change 
to  purely  natural  causes.  Thus  is  the  problem  of  the 
static-dynamic  involved  in  the  concept  of  prayer,  —  and 
we  are  led  to  ask  is  there  any  significant  meaning  or  value 
for  modern  life  in  the  experience  of  prayer.  Let  us  note, 
in  the  first  place,  that  a  careful  study  of  various  types  of 
prayer  reveals  the  same  fundamental  elements  and  the 
same  fundamental  tendencies  and  oppositions  which 
we  have  already  met  in  our  consideration  of  religious 
experience  in  general ;   namely,  the  fundamental  elements 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE ITS   FORMS  263 

of  dissatisfaction,  a  seeking  and  a  satisfaction ;  ^  and  we 
find  in  prayer  the  two  types  of  the  individual  and  the 
social  experience;  and  in  both  these  types  we  find  the 
opposition  of  the  mystical  and  the  practical  experience. 
But  further,  we  find  in  prayer  an  element  correspond- 
ing to  the  magic  efficacy  of  old-world  spells  and  incanta- 
tions. 

There  are,  in  general,  three  types  or  classes  of  prayer, 
and,  besides,  one  intermediate  class,  as  follows :  — 

1.  Magic  formulae  and  incantations. 

2.  Petitional  or  pragmatic  prayers. 

3.  Mystical  prayer ;  that  is,  prayer  as  communion. 

4.  Intermediate  class  —  Divination. 

Although  these  groups  are  distinct,  yet  in  a  given 
prayer  and  at  any  historical  period,  all  three  types  may 
be  represented. 

Let  us  turn  at  once  to  prayer  in  the  concrete  and  let 
us  study  some  of  the  earliest  prayers.  When  we  enter 
the  world  of  primitive  man,  the  first  thing  that  strikes 
us  is  the  pervasiveness  of  magic;  of  mystic  formulae, 
spells,  incantations,  and  rites  of  magic. 

Magic,  according  to  Frazer,^  is  a  primitive  form  of 
science  rather  than  a  primitive  form  of  religion,  and 
the  powers  which  man  seeks  to  influence  are  natural 
forces.  Whether  or  not  we  agree  with  this  view,  we  must 
admit,  I  think,  that  in  religion  and  in  prayer  something 
very  closely  related  to  magic,  with  its  incantations, 
spells,  and  mystic  formulae,  survives.  I  shall  therefore 
consider  these  magic  formulae  as  the  first  type  or  class  of 
prayer. 

The  life  of  savage  and  primitive  peoples,  both  in  its 
individual  and  social  aspects,  is  saturated  with  magic 
beliefs  and  practices,^  and  some  of  these  still  survive 

*  Hindu  prayer :  "Out  of  the  unreal  lead  me  to  the  real ;  out  of 
darkness  lead  me  to  light ;  out  of  death  lead  me  to  deathlessness." 

2  Frazer's  studies  in  "The  Golden  Bough." 

3  W.  W.  Skeats,  "Malay  Magic." 


264  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

amongst  the  peasantry  of  Europe  at  the  present  day. 
Mary  Antin,  a  Russian  Jew,  says :  — 

"If  my  mother  had  an  obstinate  toothache  that  honored  house- 
hold remedies  failed  to  relieve,  she  went  to  Droske,  the  pious  woman, 
who  cured  by  means  of  flint  and  steel  and  a  secret  prayer  pronounced 
as  the  sparks  flew  up.  During  an  epidemic  of  scarlet  fever  we  pro- 
tected ourselves  by  wearing  a  piece  of  red  woolen  tape  round  the 
neck.  Pepper  and  salt  tied  in  a  corner  of  the  pocket  was  effective  in 
warding  off  the  evil  eye.  There  were  lucky  signs,  lucky  charms, 
spirits  and  hobgoblins,  a  grisly  collection  gathered  by  our  wandering 
ancestors  from  the  demonologies  of  mediaeval  Europe."  ^ 

Primitive  Magic.  —  What,  then,  is  this  ^^ magic" 
which  seems  so  universally  present  in  primitive  life? 
Sympathetic  or  imitative  magic  ^  appears  to  be  the 
belief  that  by  means  of  the  proper  arts  the  powers  of 
nature  may  be  influenced  in  man's  behalf.  The  prin- 
ciples of  this  beUef  are  twofold :  The  first  principle  is 
that  '^like  produces  like" ;  and  the  second  that  between 
things  that  have  once  been  in  contact  a  secret  sympathy 
exists ;  hence  they  continue  to  act  on  one  another  even 
when  separated,  and  what  is  done  to  one  will  affect  in 
like  manner  the  other.  That  is,  the  logical  relations 
involved  are  the  relations  of  similarity  and  of  contiguity ; 
the  underlying  principle,  that  of  invariable  order. 

The  spells  and  incantations  which  accompany  magic 
rites  are  in  form  either  positive  or  negative.  They  re- 
quire some  positive  act,  or  they  enjoin  a  ^' taboo  J'  They 
seek  a  blessing  or  a  curse.  The  early  prayers  of  the 
collection  of  the  Atharva-Veda,  —  for  prayers  these 
hymns  really  are,  —  abound  in  instances  of  both  kinds. 

With  witchcraft  rites,  such  as  tying  of  knots,  binding 
of  amulets  with  healing  herbs,  or  with  imitative  pro- 
cesses, the  petitioner  seeks  to  gain  protection  or  blessing, 
or  to  bring  curses  and  vengeance  to  sorcerers  and  demons 
and  to  his  enemies.  The  incantations  have  a  constraining 
power  which  even  the  gods  must  obey. 

>  Mary  Antin,  "Within  the  Pale,"  Atlantic  Monthly,  Oct.,  1911. 
« Frazer,  VThe  Golden  Bough." 


THE   WAY  OF   LIFE  —  ITS  FORMS  265 

To  make  the  point  clear,  I  give  a  few  illustrations  of 
the  two  types  (positive,  for  blessing;  negative,  for 
curses  and  vengeance). 

Class  I.  Magic  Incantations.  —  The  coining  of 
the  rain  is  naturally  a  very  important  matter  to  primitive 
agricultural  peoples,  and  magic  rites  for  rain-making  are 
amongst  the  most  universal  of  the  examples  of  imitative 
magic.  As  an  example,  we  may  cite  an  illustration  from 
Frazer's  collection.  In  one  of  the  East  Indian  islands  a 
wizard  makes  rain  by  dipping  a  branch  from  a  certain 
tree  in  water  and  then  scattering  the  water  from  the 
bough  over  the  ground.  In  Papua,  if  he  wants  rain, 
the  Papuan  appeals  to  the  rainmaker,  who  puts  the 
right  articles  in  a  stream  of  water,  reciting  at  the  same 
time  the  appropriate  spells.  Or,  again,  if  he  wants  cer- 
tain products  of  his  garden  to  flourish,  a  sorcerer  can 
tell  him  the  proper  objects  to  bury  in  the  garden.^  Similar 
customs  for  making  rain,  for  making  the  wind  blow  or 
the  sun  to  shine,  seem  to  be  common  everywhere  amongst 
primitive  peoples,  and  even  at  the  present  day  are  found 
ceremonies  of  this  kind  in  Southeastern  Europe. 

Another  familiar  illustration  is  the  belief  foimd  amongst 
many  peoples  that  to  destroy  or  injure  the  image  of  an 
enemy  is  to  destroy  or  injure  him.^ 

Sympathetic  magic  may  be  combined  with  imitative. 

*  From  the  annual  report  of  the  Lieutenant-Governor  of  Papua, 
quoted  by  the  London  Morning  Post,  1912. 

2  For  literary  instances,  see  Theocritus,  Idyll  II. 
Biu*mng  of  Image  of  Eustacia  Vye  in  Thomas  Hardy's  **  Return 
of  the  Native." 

Rossetti's  "Sister  Helen." 

***  Oh  the  waxen  knave  was  plump  to-day. 
Sister  Helen ; 
How  like  dead  folk  he  has  dropped  away  T 
*  Nay  now,  of  the  dead  what  you  can  say ; 
Little  Brother?' 
(O  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
What  of  the  dead  between  Hell  and  Heaven  ?) " 

***But  he  has  not  ceased  to  cry  to-day, 
Sister  Helen, 


266  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

The  fonner  depends  on  the  belief  of  the  savage  that  if 
he  can  obtain  possession  of  anything  belonging  to  another 
person,  he  has  power  over  that  person.  The  logical  prin- 
ciple here  is  that  of  contiguity. 

Frazer  gives  an  illustration  of  a  combination  of  the  two 
types  of  magic  in  the  following  Malay  charm  : 

"Take  parings  of  nails,  hair,  eyebrows,  etc.,  of  the  victim;  make 
them  into  his  likeness  with  wax  from  a  deserted  bees'  comb.  Scorch 
the  figm-e  slowly  by  holding  it  over  a  lamp  every  night  for  seven  nights, 
and  say :  — 

"*It  is  not  wax  that  I  am  scorching. 
It  is  the  liver,  heart,  and  spleen  of  so-and-so  that  I  scorch.' 

After  the  seventh  tune,  bum  the  figure,  and  your  victim  will  die." 

The  same  power  attaches  to  the  clothes,  weapons,  and 
even  to  the  name  of  a  person.  As  an  instance,  an  illus- 
tration from  Frazer  which  also  contains  the  two  types 
of  magic.  In  Burma  a  rejected  lover  sometimes  gets  a 
sorcerer  to  make  an  image  of  the  scornful  maiden,  con- 
taining a  piece  of  her  clothes  or  something  worn  by  her. 
Certain  charms  or  medicines  are  also  used  in  the  com- 
position of  the  image,  which  is  then  hung  up  or  thrown 
into  the  water ;  and  as  a  result  the  girl  is  supposed  to  go 
mad. 

The  Magic  of  the  Name.  —  In  primitive  rengions, 
frequently,  magic  power  is  supposed  to  be  bound  up 
with  the  name.  The  baptismal  name  may  not  be  men- 
tioned even  by  near  relatives,  lest  it  should  be  overheard 
by  evil  spirits,  or  by  an  enemy,  who  would  then  have 
power  over  the  person.  For  example,  in  ancient  Egypt, 
to  obtain  the  name  of  the  god  was  to  transfer  his  power 

to  the  possessor ;   to  obtain  the  name  of  a  human  being, 

/ 

That  you  should  take  your  curse  away.' 
*  My  prayer  was  heard  —  he  need  but  pray, 
Little  Brother!' 
(O  Mother,  Mary  Mother, 
Shall  not  God  hear  between  Hell  and  Heaven?)" 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  267 

to  make  him  a  slave.  Amongst  the  Romans,  too,  the 
name  of  the  guardian  god  of  Rome  was  kept  a  profound 
secret  from  Romans  enemies,  since  there  was  magic  in  the 
name.     Various  illustrations  follow. 

FROM   "THE  HYMNS  OF  THE  ATHARVA-VEDA " 

Illustration  of  an  incantation  for  release  from  evils 
and  for  welfare :  — 

"From  perdition,  from  imprecation  of  the  sisters,  from  hatred  do 
I  release  thee,  from  Varuna's  fetter ;  free  from  guilt  I  make  thee 
by  my  incantation ;  be  heaven  and  earth  both  propitious  to  thee." 

(Atharva-Veda.) 

With  an  oblation  for  confluence  of  wealth :  — 

"1.  Together,  together  let  the  rivers  flow;  together  the  winds;  to- 
gether the  birds ;  this  my  sacrifice  let  them  enjoy  of  old ;  I  offer 
with  a  confluent  oblation." 

"4.  What  fountains  of  butter  flow  together,  and  of  milk  and  of 
water;  with  all  those  confluences  we  make  riches  flow  together 
for  me." 

For  increase  of  barley :  — 

"1.  Rise  up,  become  abundant  with  thine  own  greatness,  O  barley; 

—  let  not  the  bolt  from  heaven  smite  thee. 
"2.  When  we  appeal  unto  thee,  the  divine  barley  that  listens,  then 

rise  up  like  the  sky;  be  .  .  .  like  the  ocean." 

With  an  amulet :  — 

"In  order  to  length  of  life,  to  great  joy,  we  taking  no  harm,  bear 

the  Jargeda  amulet.  .  .  . 
"Let  the  amulet  of  thousandfold  radiance  protect  us  about  on  every 

side." 

Hymns  from  Egyptian  Book  of  the  Dead. — The 
Egyptian  Book  of  the  Dead  is  largely  talismanic.  It 
consists  of  prayers  to  the  gods  mingled  with  mystic 
formulae  and  incantations  which  shall  enable  the  soul 
to  escape  the  dangers  and  secure  the  blessings  of  the 
life  after  death.  For  in  the  other  world  as  here,  hymns 
must  be  sung  and  the  ''right  word"  used  which,  by  the 


268  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

magic  dwelling  in  it,  could  open  gates,  drive  away  demons 
and  wild  beasts,  give  escape  from  the  net  of  the  snarer, 
power  to  enter  through  transformation  into  the  various 
animal  forms;  to  pass  the  judgment  of  a  sacred  Osiris 
and,  finally,  to  enter  the  realms  of  bliss  and  secure 
divinity. 

A  chapter   about   the   cornelian,   Ta  (Buckle),  to  be 
put  on  the  back  of  the  deceased. 

"  1.  Blood  of  Isis,  magic  power  of  Isis,  talisman  to  protect  this  Great 
One  and  to  break  to  pieces  what  is  hated  by  him." 

(Chap.  CLVI.) 

"4.  To  him  are  opened  the  gates  of  another  world.  To  him  are 
given  wheat  and  barley  in  the  field  Anro.  He  is  similar  to  the 
gods  who  are  there,  say  the  servants  of  Horus  who  reap  there." 

A  chapter  about  performing  the  transformations  into  a 
lotus :  — 

"I  am  a  pure  Lotus,  going  forth  from  the  Luminous  Ones. 
I  keep  the  nostrils  of  Ra,  who  keeps  the  nostrils  of  Hathor ! 
I  write  the  messages.    I  am  a  pure  Lotus  springing  out  of  the 
field  of  the  Sun."  (Chap.  CXXVII.) 

"Hail  you  gods  of  the  double  retreat  who  inhabit  the  Amanti ! 
"1.  Hail  you  people  to  the  gates  of  the  Tnort,  who  keep  this  god 

and  make  descend. 
"2.  the  allocutions  before  Osiris  to  protect  those  who 

glorify  you  and  annihilate  foes  of  Ra.    Make  light  dispel 
"3.  your  darkness.    Contemplate  your  chief.    Live  as  he 

lives.  Invoke  him  who  is  as  your  Disk.  Guide  me  towards 
your  ways.  Let  my  soul  see  through  the  mystery  of  your 
dwellings.    I  am  one  of  you.  ..." 

"Open  to 
"12.  me  the  gates  of  heaven  and  earth.    Let  my  soul  overtake 
Osiris  there  and  may  I  pass  through  the  gates  of  those  who 
acclaim  me  when  they  see  me.    May  I  enter  praised." 

(Chapter  XIX.)  A  chapter  about  the  crown  of  truth 
speaking :  — 

"1.  Says  the  Osu-is  N:  Thy  father  Tmu  set  the  fine  crown  of 
truth  speaking  upon  thy  forehead,  thou  livest  beloved  by 
the  gods. 


THE   WAY  OF   LIFE  —  ITS  FORMS  269 

"2.  and  shall  live  forever,  for  Osiris  N  residing  in  the 
West  made  thy  work  Truth  against  thy  foes.  ..." 
"  12.  Horns  repeated  those  incantations  four  times  and  all  his  foes 
fell,  thrown  down,  slaughtered.    The  Osiris  N  shall  repeat 
these  incantations  four  times  and  all  his  foes  shall  fall. 
Thou  shalt  say  this  chapter  in  the  morning  and  it  shall  be 
very  efficient  indeed." 

A  chapter  about  repelling  the  crocodiles  that  come  to 
take  off  the  man's  magic  charms  in  the  nether  world :  — 

"Back!    Recede!    Back,  crocodile!    Do  not  come  to  me!    I 
know  my  magic  charm.     Do  not  utter  the  two  names." 

Chapter  CLXII.  A  chapter  about  the  talisman  of  the 
sacred  cow  for  putting  heat  under  the  head  of  the  deceased. 

"1.  Hail  thou,  O  Lion  of  the  Double  Force. 

"2.  whose  beaming  is  boundless;  thou  art  the  Master  of  the 
various  wrappings  that  thou  hidest  in  the  solar  eye  for  their 
births.    Thou  art  the  one  whom  the  adorers  invoke  amidst 

"3.  the  gods,  the  great  runner,  the  swift  moving.  Thou  art  the 
god  who  is  invoked,  coming  to  him  who  invokes  thee,  protecting 
the  unfortunate  against  his  oppressor.  Come  at  my  calling, 
I  am  the 

"4.  sacred  cow.  .  .  .    Thy  name  is  in  my  mouth.  .  .  . 

"5.  I  adore  thy  names.  ...     I  listen  to  thy  voice  on  the  day 

"6.  when  thou  puttest  heat  under  his  head  to  protect  him  at  the 
sacred  gate  of  On.  .  .  . 
"11.  O  Ammon  who  art  in  Heaven!     Turn  your  face  towards  the 

body  of  your  son.    O  give  him  health  in  the  nether  world. 
"12.  This  book  is  the  greatest  of  the  mysteries.     Do  not  let  it 
be  seen.    It  is  an  abomination  to  have  it  known.    Conceal  its 
existence.    The  book  of  the  Hidden  Dwelling  is  its  name.     It 
is  ended." 

The  following  are  magical  texts  and  incantations  from 
the  religion  of  Babylon  ^  —  formulas  against  the  power 
of  witches,  sorcerers,  and  demons.  These  demons  and 
sorcerers  cause  disease  and  other  ills  such  as  famine, 
storms,  etc. 

Illustration :  — 

"They  (the  witches)  have  used  all  kinds  of  charms  to 
entwine  me  as  with  ropes, 

1  Jastrow,  "Religion  of  Babylon." 


270  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

to  catch  me  in  a  cage, 

to  tie  me  as  with  cords, 

to  overpower  me  as  in  a  net, 

to  twist  me  as  with  a  sling. 

But  I,  by  command  of  Marduk,  the  lord  of  charms.  .  .  ." 

The  incantation  continues  by  threatening  the  witches  with 
the  same  ills,  while  the  actions  are  symbolically  performed 
by  exorcises  on  effigies  of  the  witches. 

Incantations  shade  off  into  prayers  proper  to  the 
gods,  and  then  pass  from  prayers  back  again  as  in  the 
following : 

"O  Shamash,  on  this  day  purify  and  cleanse  the  king,  the  son  of 
his  god.  Whatever  is  evil  within  him,  let  it  be  taken  out,  cleanse 
him  like  a  vessel.  .  .  .  Illimiine  him  like  a  vessel  of.  .  .  .  Like 
the  copper  of  a  polished  tablet  let  him  be  bright.  Release  him  from 
the  ban." 

Other  examples  are  for  blessing  on  kine,  success  in 
agricultm*e,  in  gambling,  for  rain,  for  harmony,  for  the 
long  life  of  a  child,  for  superiority,  success  against  enemies, 
purification,  expiation  from  guilt ;  matrimonial  happiness, 
for  healing,  for  wisdom,  etc. 

Illustration.     For  relief  from  guilt :  — 

"1.  If  knowing,  if  unknowing,  we  have  committed  sins,  do  ye  free 

us  from  that,  O  all  gods,  accordant. 
"2.  If  waking,  if  sleeping,  I  have  committed  sin,  let  what  is  and 

what  is  to  be  free  me  from  that  as  from  a  pest. 
".  .  .  Like  sacrificial  butter  purified  by  a  purifier,  let  all   cleanse 

me  from  sin." 

The  following  examples  give  the  negative  aspect,  i.e. 
Curses  :  — 

"Up  hath  gone  your  sun,  up  this  spell  of  mine,  that  I  may  be  slayer 
of  foes,  without  rival,  rival  slayer." 
"Let  the  curse  go  to  the  curser. 
Our  part  is  along  with  the  friendly ;  of  the 
imfriendly  the  eye  confuses 
we  crush  in  the  ribs." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  271 

Against  demons  with  an  amulet  of  lead :  — 

''What  devourers  on  the  night  of  the  new  moon  have  arisen  troops- 
wide?    The  fourth  Agni  is  the  demon  slayer ;  he  shall  bless  us." 

Besides  the  negative  in  the  hymns,  it  is  found  in  the 
form  of  '^ taboo"  in  many  of  the  magic  rites  and  spells, 
and  in  primitive  superstitions.  One  effect  of  the  ^Haboo  " 
appears  to  have  been  to  isolate  whatever  was  supposed 
to  be  charged  with  mysterious,  supernatural  power,  that 
it  might  not  harm  by  contact,  —  as  in  the  case  of  a  dead 
body,  holy  person,  the  gods,  etc.  Various  taboos  surround 
the  acts  of  eating  and  drinking  because  the  soul  might 
escape  through  the  mouth  at  such  times,  through  the 
spells  of  wizards  and  demons. 

We  have  already  noted  how  often  the  god  had  a  secret 
name,  i.e.  a  name  which  was  ^' taboo''  because  of  the 
supernatural  power  residing  in  it. 

Many  other  instances  of  taboo  might  be  given.  They 
can  be  found  in  Frazer's  collection,^  but  enough  perhaps 
has  been  said  to  suggest  the  element  of  the  negative,  — 
the  '^Thou  shalt  not,"  —  in  the  primitive  magic  rites 
with  which  were  connected  incantations,  hymns,  and 
prayers  .  .  .  while  in  the  Vedic  hymns  themselves,  we 
find  along  with  the  positive  entreaties  for  protection  and 
for  blessings  of  various  kinds,  the  negative  side  expressed 
in  the  demand  for  destruction  of  foes  and  in  the  cursing 
of  them. 

Class  II  comprises  the  prayers  of  the  petitional  or 
pragmatic  type.  The  emphasis  here  is  on  the  will, 
either  capricious  or  orderly,  of  the  god. 

In  the  history  of  primitive  religion  we  find  two  general 
trends  or  tendencies  in  regard  to  a  belief  about  divinity. 

First,  there  is  the  Nature-tendency,  i.e.  the  tendency 
to  endow  with  supernatural  powers  such  striking  phe- 
nomena of  nature  as  sun,  moon,  stars,  storms,  winds,  ani- 
mals, birds.     It  is  held  that  these  have  an  influence  on 

1  Frazer,  "  The  Golden  Bough." 


272  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

man's  life  and  destiny.  Already,  in  the  discussion  of 
imitative  magic,  we  have  seen  how  closely  dependent 
upon  these  nature  powers  primitive  man  felt  his  life  to 
be.  This  may  have  been  the  origin  of  man's  sense  of 
dependence,  which  is  often  made  the  root  of  rehgious 
experience.  But  the  psychological  history  of  religious 
experience  shows  in  primitive  man,  besides  the  sense  of 
dependence,  a  sense  of  mystery  and  awe,  and  so  we  meet 
in  the  history  of  religious  belief  a  second  general  tendency, 
—  a  tendency  to  a  behef  in  unseen  presences,  which 
come  as  friend  or  foe,  and  which  may  appear  in  nightmare 
and  in  dreams  as  mysterious  visions,  or  as  the  disturbing, 
haunting  presence  of  departed  ancestors ;  or  they  appear 
simply  as  capricious  spirits,  of  the  type  of  Shakespeare's 
Puck  and  Ariel,  which,  weaving  spells  and  enchantments, 
bewitch  and  vex  mortal  man,  or  else  perhaps  assist  him 
and  bring  him  felicity. 

In  the  further  development,  beyond  their  original 
significance,  of  these  two  tendencies,  —  the  social  ten- 
dency and  the  nature-tendency,  as  we  may  call  them,  — 
they  become  blurred  and  blended  and  suggest  that  if 
we  go  back  far  enough,  these  two  streams  of  tendency 
take  their  rise  at  last  in  the  same  source.  Man's  sense  of 
dependence  and  his  sense  of  mystery  find  their  origin  in 
that  fundamental  tendency  to  ideality  which  we  noted 
at  the  beginning  of  our  investigation  and  out  of  which 
springs  his  irresistible  and  unconquerable  faith  in  the 
spirituality  of  the  universe  as  an  whole. 

At  first  primitive  animism  and  nature  worship,  then, 
are  present  together  in  the  early  history  of  religion. 

Gradually  in  the  mind  of  primitive  man  the  order  of 
nature  and  natural  phenomena  became  transformed 
into  personal  beings,  with  wills  and  interests  capricious 
like  their  own.  Whether  ''the  critical  step,"  by  which 
the  unseen  powers  behind  natural  phenomena  became 
personified,  came  about  through  the  reflection  of  the 
more  thoughtful  who  saw  the  failure  of  magic  arts,  as 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  273 

Frazer  suggests;  whether  through  the  deification  of 
heroes  and  of  men  possessed  of  peculiar  powers  (as  medi- 
cine men,  magicians,  and  '^holy  men") ;  whether  through 
ancestor  worship,  ghosts  and  apparitions  in  dreams; 
through  totemism;  through  the  personification  of  ab- 
stract ideals  resulting  from  the  grouping  of  particular 
concrete  experiences  under  one  general  notion,  as  from 
special  springs  or  fires  is  created  a  general  water-god  or 
fire-god;  or  whether  from  elements  contributed  by  all 
of  these;  somehow  the  belief  in  spirits  arose.  It  seems 
probable  that  Pfleiderer  is  right  in  holding  from  the 
study  of  historical  religions  that  'Hhe  being  in  which  a 
particular  communal  group,  family  or  clan  or  race  or 
people  found  its  deity  originated  in  a  combination  of 
the  collective  ancestral  spirits  of  the  group  with  a  per- 
sonified natural  power  (thus  in  ancient  Egypt,  in  China 
and  in  Japan  we  find  the  worship  of  earth  and  earthly 
spirits  of  fruitfulness ;  and  the  sacred  animals  of  totem- 
istic  tribes).  In  the  religion  of  ancient  Egypt  we  find 
the  worship  of  the  sun  as  Amun-Ra  (etc.),  and  of  the 
power  of  the  water  of  the  Nile,  in  relation  to  vegetation, 
in  the  Osiris  worship.  ^^Why  in  particular  this  or  that 
natural  object  was  chosen,"  says  Pfleiderer,  ''we  cannot 
tell;  the  main  fact  remains  that  each  of  these  groups 
worships  in  its  god  the  power  by  which  their  common 
life,  as  members  thereof,  and  their  natural  environment 
was  caused  and  preserved;  for  each  of  his  worshippers, 
the  god  is  the  creating  and  preserving  power  of  life,  mak- 
ing the  group  collectively  permanent  .  .  .  the  tribe-god 
of  the  oldest  religions  is  thought  of  not  as  a  man,  but  as 
a  living  being  of  heavenly  or  earthly  kind  ...  he  was 
worshipped  as  a  god  not  because  he  was  an  ancestor,  but 
because  he  was  worshipped  he  was  held  to  be  the  race- 
father  of  his  worshippers."  ^ 

In  passing  from  the  religion  of  the  Vedas  to  that  of 
Greece  we  get  some  suggestions  of  how  the  transformation 
1  Pfleiderer,  "Religion  and  Historic  Faiths." 


274  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

may  have  taken  place  in  the  Aryan  race.  Indra,  the 
shining  heavens,  the  hurler  of  thunderbolts,  in  India, 
is  transformed  in  Greece  into  Zeus,  in  whom  there  is  a 
survival  of  nature  characters  in  the  midst  of  his  acquired 
human  ones.  In  Hebrew  history  some  hint  too  is  given  of 
how  the  Semitic  tribal  deity,  a  storm  god,  sacred  animal, 
or  tree-spirit,  becomes  Jahwe,  the  god  of  war,  Israel's  de- 
fender, guide,  and  deliverer. 

The  point  for  us  is,  that  however  the  belief  in  spirits 
arose,  or  however  the  transformation  of  the  gods  from 
natural  phenomena  to  personified  beings  occurred,  when 
primitive  man  thought  of  his  god  as  a  being  with  a  capri- 
cious will  akin  to  his  own,  he  could  no  longer  think  of 
him  as  moved  by  mere  magic,  but  rather  as  one  to  be 
propitiated  and  wooed  by  sacrifice  and  by  supplication, 
by  entreaty  and  promises.  Thus  the  rites  of  sympathetic 
magic  pass  over  into  sacrifice  and  prayer;  yet  in  these 
latter  much  of  the  essence  of  the  old  magic  charms, 
spells,  and  incantations  survives. 

The  underlying  thought  of  sympathetic  magic,  as  we 
have  seen,  appears  to  have  been  that  by  imitative  activi- 
ties the  coming  of  rain,  of  wind  and  sunshine,  of  vegeta- 
tion and  of  similar  natural  processes  could  be  aided  and 
hastened.  Hence  man  himself  assisted  in  the  processes 
of  nature,  and  in  so  far  as  divinity  was  associated  with 
these  processes  man  was  a  fellow-worker  with  the  divine. 

So  far  as  prayer  proper  is  found  in  the  Vedic  hymns,  it 
is  pragmatic,  with  a  double  aspect  positive  and  negative, 
representing  the  simple  needs  and  demands  of  primitive 
people,  prayers  for  blessings  to  the  sacrificer  himself  and 
his  kin  and  possessions,  destruction  and  curses  upon 
enemies,  evil  spirits,  and  sorcerers.  Closely  intermingled 
with  the  sacrifice  and  prayers  are  old  survivals  of  witch- 
craft rites,  exorcises  and  incantations  of  savage  folk. 
With  amulets  and  healing  plants  evils  are  exorcised  and 
blessings  brought ;  "  with  water  and  fire  some  guilt  is 
purged ;  with  the  sacrifice  of  a  black  animal  and  himself 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  275 

dressed  in  black  garments,  the  sacrificer  draws  down  the 
rain  clouds ;  with  imitative  magical  rites,  such  as  kiUing 
the  corn  spirit,  mimic  marriages,  and  various  harvest 
customs  —  with  rules  regulated  by  the  waxing  and  waning 
of  the  moon  —  he  seeks  to  secure  the  return  of  vegetation 
and  good  harvest ;  or,  eating  of  the  animal  sacrifice,  he 
is  supposed  to  acquire  the  powers  of  the  divine  being 
whom  the  animal  represents '\*  in  knots,^  rings,  etc.,  he 
finds  magic  charms  which  make  these  objects  'Haboo" 
on  critical  occasions. 

Already  in  the  Vedas  natural  phenomenon  had  become 
endowed  with  spiritual  and  a  quasi-personal  life.  Another 
''critical  step^^  was  taken  when  the  psychical ^  became 
ethical.  Something  of  the  moral  already  appears  em- 
bodied in  some  of  the  Vedic  hymns.  Though  for  the 
most  part  favor  and  protection  of  the  god  must  be  won 
by  sacrifice,  or  by  a  drink  of  intoxicating  soma,  yet  there 
are  hints  that  the  gods  are  on  the  whole  supporters  of  the 
social-moral  order  (such  as  it  was),  protectors  of  the  up- 
right, and  avengers  of  guilt.^  As  an  instance,  A  song  of 
the  Rig- Veda  —  of  one  guilty  and  pursued  by  disaster :  — 

"I  commune  thus  with  myself.  When  may  I  again  approach 
Varuna?  What  offering  will  he  deign  to  accept  without  showing 
anger?  When  shall  I,  my  soul  reviving,  behold  again  his  favor? 
Humbly  as  a  servant  will  I  make  reparation  to  him,  merciful  that  he 
is,  that  I  may  be  once  more  blameless." 

The  further  development  of  the  process  we  can  trace 
to  some  extent  in  Greek  mythology  and  in  the  religion 
of  Israel.  Even^  the  Homeric  gods  have  some  moral 
qualities  in  their  more  public  functions  as  guardians  of 

*  Hymn  to  accompany  the  releasing  of  a  house :  — 

"What  of  thee  is  tied,  O  thou  that  possessest 
all  choice  things,  what  fetter  and  knot  is  made, 
that  with  a  spell  I  make  fall  apart." 

(Atharva-Veda. ) 

2  See  George  Santayana,  "  The  life  of  Reason." 

3  See  "Varuna's  Fetter,"  page  267. 

*  George  Santayana,  "  The  Life  of  Reason." 


276  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

the  law  and  order  of  the  state;  Apollo  and  Athena 
embodied  to  a  great  extent  spiritual  ideals. 

In  the  religion  of  Israel  an  original  Semitic  nature 
god  becomes  the  tribal  god,  champion  and  upholder  of 
Israel  in  its  experiences  of  defeat  and  victory  —  Jahwe  of 
hosts ;  and  finally  in  the  prophets  and  Psalms,  the  god 
of  righteousness,  judge  of  all  the  earth,  who  loves  justice 
and  mercy  better  than  sacrifice. 

The  prayers  which  we  have  been  considering  are  of 
the  non-ethical  naturalistic  type ;  when  religion  becomes 
ethical,  the  pragmatic  character  is  still  found,  also  the 
magic  element,  since  in  some  of  the  psalms  and  early 
prophets  righteousness  becomes  a  kind  of  magic  to  bring 
prosperity;  but  the  blessings  asked  for  are  spiritual 
blessings. 

The  Hebrew  Psalms  (hymns  largely  intermingled  with 
prayers)  represent  a  state  of  transition.  They  are  mainly 
spiritual,  yet  we  find  also  prayers  for  material  prosperity, 
long  life,  offspring,  etc.,  and  also  a  cursing  of  enemies 
as  vehement  if  not  as  repellent  in  expression  as  the  curses 
of  the  Atharva-Veda. 

Class  II.  —  In  the  petitional  type  of  prayer,  as  already 
noted,  the  gods  are  thought  of  in  the  likeness  of  men, 
and  the  emphasis  is  on  the  Will  as  cause.  Whether 
this  Will  be  capricious  or  orderly  —  whether  the  good 
sought  is  a  material  or  a  spiritual  blessing,  the  principle 
is  the  same;  that  is,  the  principle  of  ''I  give  that  thou 
mayest  give."  ^  The  will  of  the  supernatural  powers 
may  be  propitiated  and  wooed  by  flattery  and  praise, 
by  supplication,  entreaties  and  promises,  together  with 
some  accompanying  gift  or  sacrifice ;  —  hence  a  possi- 
bility is  open  for  something  to  happen  contrary  to  the 
expected  or  regular  order  of  nature,  —  that  is,  a  miracle 
may  take  place. 

Examples  of  this  type  of  prayer  are  so  common  that 
it  is  not  necessary  to  give  many  instances.    Examples 

^  Jane  Harrison,  "Prolegomena  to  Greek  Religion." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  277 

are  found  in  some  of  the  prayers  in  the  English  book  of 
Common  Prayer,  and  in  Christian  sects  generally;  in 
Indian  prayers,  Vedic  hymns,  and  other  early  historical 
prayers;  in  Olympic  religious  rites;  in  types  of  prayers 
in  the  early  Old  Testament,  and  in  some  of  the  Psalms. 
Here  are  a  few  primitive  prayers :  — 

INDIAN  PRAYER 

"O,  Wohkonda  (Master  of  Life)  pity  me! 
I  am  very  poor ; 
Give  me  what  I  need ; 
Give  me  success  against  my  enemies ; 
May  I  be  able  to  take  scalps ; 
May  I  be  able  to  take  horses." 

(Osages  of  the  United  States) 

PATAGONIAN 

"O  Father,  Great  Man, 
King  of  the  land ; 
Favor  us,  dear  spirit,  every  day, 
With  good  food. 
With  good  water. 
With  good  sleep. 
Art  thou  hungry? 
Poor  am  I,  poor  is  this  meal ; 
Take  of  it  if  thou  wilt." 

FROM  "THE  VEDIC  HYMNS" 

"O  Indra,  come  O  hero  with  thy  two  bays,  drink  of  the  pressed 
soma ;  enjoy  the  sweet  draught ;  help,  O  Mighty  one !  for  our  prayer 
come  to  us ;  hear  my  call,  enjoy  my  songs ;  hither,  O  Indra,  with  self- 
harnessed  studs,  come  with  great  joy." 

(Praise  and  Prayer  to  Indra.) 

The  prayer  of  iEneas  in  sailing  from  Italy :  — 

"We  follow  Thee,  O  Holy  Power,  whoever  thou  art  and  once  more 
with  joy  obey  Thy  commands.  O  be  present ;  lend  us  Thy  protection 
and  light  up  friendly  stars  in  the  heavens."  * 

Prayer  of  the  Hidery ;  dwellers  in  northwestern  America 

to  their  Sun  Totem :  — 

*  Quoted  from  the  **  Outdoor  Life  of  Greek  and  Roman  Poets,"  by 
Countess  Evelyn  Martinengo  Cesaresco. 


278  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

"O  thou  Sun  look  down  upon  us,  shine  on  us,  0  Sun  take  away 
the  dark  clouds  that  the  rain  may  cease  to  fall  because  we  want  to  go 
hunting.  Look  kindly  on  us,  O  Sun.  Grant  us  peace  in  our  midst 
as  well  as  with  our  enemies.    Again  we  ask  thee  to  hear  us,  0  Sun."  ^ 

TibuUus  describes  how  at  the  Ambarvalia,  or  Spring 
Festival,  when  all  work  ceased  and  the  fields  were  purified, 
the  holy  lanab  is  led  to  the  altar  and  Bacchus  and  Ceres 
invoked :  — 

"Gods  of  our  native  land,  we  purify  our  fields;  we  purify  our 
hinds,  repel,  ye  Gods,  all  evil  from  our  boundaries.  Let  not  our  crops 
cheat  the  laborers  of  the  harvest  with  deceitful  blades,  nor  the  slow- 
footed  lamb  fear  the  swift  wolves."  ^ 

Prayer  of  an  Inca  of  Peru  for  the  removal  of  guilt  by 
lustration :  — 

"O  thou  river,  receive  the  sins  I  have  this  day  confessed  unto  the 
sun,  carry  them  down  to  the  sea  and  let  them  never  more  appear."  ^ 

Early  Latin  prayer  quoted  by  the  late  Father  Mars  i^ — 

"I  pray  and  implore  Thee  that  Thou  wouldst  turn  away  from  us 
disease,  sin,  sorrow,  destitution,  desolation,  distress 
and  that  Thou  wouldst  suffer  the  fruits  of  the  earth,  corn,  grass  and 
young  olives  to  increase  and  thrive,  and  wouldst  preserve  shepherds 
and  their  flocks  in  safety." 

A  Babylonian  Penitential  Psalm :  — 

"It  is  good  to  pray  to  thee,  for  thou  art  inclined  to  listen.  Thy 
glance  is  a  hearing  of  prayer,  thy  utterance  light.  Have  mercy  upon 
me,  Istar,  proclaim  my  welfare.  Hearken  to  my  beseeching  —  If  I 
bear  thy  yoke,  relieve  me  of  my  burdens.  If  I  have  regard  to  thy 
glance,  may  my  prayer  be  heard  and  granted.  If  I  seek  thy  rulership, 
may  life  and  salvation  be  my  portion.  May  the  good  protecting 
spirit  which  stands  before  thee  be  mine.  May  I  achieve  the  pros- 
perity which  stand  to  thy  right  hand  and  to  thy  left.  May  I  be 
healthy  and  uninjured  that  I  may  worship  thy  divinity.  ...  As 
I  wish,  may  I  achieve.  .  .  .  May  the  gods  of  all  render  homage  to 
thee." 

(A  prayer  to  the  goddess  Istar.) 

1  Quoted  by  Tyler  in  "Primitive  Culture." 

2  See  "Outdoor  Life  of  Greek  and  Roman  Poets,"  by  Countess 
Evelyn  Martinengo  Cesaresco. 

3  Tyler,  "Primitive  Culture." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  279 

This  prayer  is  a  petition  for  escape  from  evil  and  the 
consequences  of  guilt. 

Many  prayers  are  transitional  in  type,  i,e,  they  are 
between  the  class  of  petitional  prayer  and  the  truly 
spiritual  prayer. 

A  Transitional  Group.  —  The  prayers  of  the  Hebrew 
psalmist  are  very  largely  cries  to  God  for  help  in  distress, 
deliverance  from  enemies  and  evil  doers,  —  the  natural 
expression  of  a  nation  in  captivity.  Help  is  expected 
in  so  far  as  the  nation,  or  the  remnant  represented,  is 
righteous.  Still  very  many  of  these  prayers  hardly 
express  positively  a  prayer  for  spiritual  or  moral  gifts. 
As  typical,  we  may  take  Ps.  27,  7-12 :  — 

"  Hear,  0  Lord,  when  I  cry  with  my  voice. 
Have  mercy  upon  me  also,  and  assure  me. 
When  thou  saidst,  Seek  ye  my  face,  my  heart  said  unto  thee,  Thy 

face,  Lord,  will  I  seek. 
Hide  not  thy  face  from  me  ; 
Put  not  thy  servant  away  in  anger. 
Thou  hast  been  my  help ; 

Cast  me  not  off,  neither  forsake  me,  O  God  of  my  salvation. 
For  my  father  and  my  mother  have  forsaken  me. 
But  the  Lord  will  take  me  up. 
Teach  me  thy  way,  0  Lord ; 
And  lead  me  in  a  plain  path. 
Because  of  mine  enemies." 

From  the  Devotions  for  the  Mass :  — 

"Mercifully  hear  our  prayers,  O  Lord,  and  graciously  accept  this 
oblation  which  we,  thy  servants,  wouldst  make  to  thee;  and  as  we 
offer  it  to  the  honor  of  thy  name,  so  it  may  be  to  us  here  a  means  of 
obtaining  thy  grace,  and  life  everlasting  hereafter." 

On  the  negative  side  perhaps  we  can  all  recall  some  of 
the  prayers  for  vengeance  upon  enemies  in  the  Psalter :  — 

"  Strive  thou,  O  Lord,  with  them  that  strive  with  me. 
Fight  thou  against  them  that  fight  against  me. 
Let  them  be  turned  back  and  confounded  that  desire  my  hurt. 
Let  them  be  as  chaff  before  the  wind  and  the  angel  of  the  Lord  driv- 
ing them  on."  (Psfllm  35.) 


280  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

"O  Lord,  thou  God  to  whom  vengeance  belongeth, 
Thou  God  to  whom  vengeance  belongeth,  shine  forth. 
Lift  up  thyself,  thou  Judge  of  the  earth, 
Render  to  the  proud  their  desert. 
Lord,  how  long  shall  the  wicked  triumph?'' 

(Psalm  74.) 

The  point  to  be  noted  in  these  Hebrew  prayers  is, 
that  while  destruction  of  enemies  is  prayed  for,  these 
enemies  are  not  so  much  personal  foes  as  ^'evil  doers,'' 
'* workers  of  iniquity"  who  have  ^^ rebelled  against  God" 
—  a  God  of  righteousness,  hence  his  foes  as  well,  and 
deserving  of  punishment.  So  we  may  note  in  passing 
the  social  aspect  of  these  prayers. 

"O  Lord,  in  thee  do  I  put  my  trust, 
Keep  me  from  the  snare  the  wicked  have  laid  for  me. 
Let  the  wicked  fall  into  their  own  nets, 
Whilst  that  I  withal  escape." 

(Psahn  141.) 

In  the  litany  (Book  of  Common  Prayer)  prayers  for 
deliverance  from  sin  are  curiously  intermingled  with 
prayers  for  deliverance  from  material  ills  and  merited 
punishment.     For  example :  — 

"Remember  not,  Lord,  our  offences,  neither  take  thou  vengeance 
of  our  sins;  spare  thy  people.  .  .  .  From  all  blindness  of  heart, 
from  pride,  vainglory,  and  hypocrisy ;  from  envy,  hatred  and  malice 
and  all  uncharitableness ;  from  all  inordinate  and  sinful  affections, 
and  from  all  the  deceitful  allurements  of  this  transitory  world.  Good 
Lord,  deliver  us.  .  .  ." 

"We  humbly  beseech  thee,  O  Father,  mercifully  to  look  upon  our 
infirmities,  and  for  the  glory  of  thy  name  turn  from  us  all  those  evils 
which  we  most  justly  deserve ;  and  grant  that  in  all  our  troubles  we 
may  put  our  whole  trust  and  confidence  in  thy  mercy,  and  evermore 
serve  thee  in  holiness  and  pureness  of  living." 

Gretchen's  prayer  to  the  Virgin,  in  "  Faust, ^^  is  wholly 
a  prayer  for  deliverance  from  the  sorrow  and  punishment 
of  sin :  — 

"Ach,  neige 
Du  Schmerzenreiche 
Dein  Antlitz  gnadig  meiner  Noth 


THE   WAY  OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  281 

Das  Schnitt  im  Herzen, 
Mit  tausend  Schmerzen 
Blickst  auf  du  deines  Sohnes  Tod. 


"Die  Scheiben  for  meinen  Fenster. 
Bethaut  ich  mit  Thranen,  ach ! 
Als  ich  am  friihen  Morgen 
Dir  diese  Blumen  brach. 

"Hilf !  rette  mich  von  Schwach  und  Tod  I 
Ach  neige, 

Du  Schmerzem-eiche, 
Dein  Antlitz  gnadig  meiner  Noth ! " 

Compare  the  above  with  the  following  Hymn  of  the 
Artharva-Veda  in  a  remedial  rite :  For  release  from  guilt 
and  distress :  — 

"Beautiful  are  heaven  and  earth,  pleasant  near  by,  of  great  vows; 
seven  divine  waters  have  flowed ;  let  them  free  us  from  distress. 

"Let  them  free  from  that  which  comes  from  a  curse,  then  also  from 
that  which  is  of  Varuna;  then  from  Yamas*  fetter,  from  all  offence 
against  the  gods." 

and  also  with  the  following  Babylonian  penitential 
prayer  for  any  god  :  — 

"0  lord,  my  sins  are  many,  great  are  my  transgressions.  I  know 
not  the  sin  which  I  have  committed,  nor  do  I  know  the  transgression. 
The  god  whom  I  know,  whom  I  do  not  know,  hath  oppressed  me; 
the  goddess  whom  I  know,  whom  I  do  not  know,  hath  caused  me 
pain.  When  I  sought  help,  no  one  took  me  by  the  hand.  When  I 
wept,  no  one  came  to  my  side.  How  long  my  god,  my  goddess,  will 
thy  anger  not  cease,  and  thy  unfriendly  heart  not  find  rest?  0  Lord, 
despise  not  thy  slave.  Cast  into  the  waters  of  the  marsh,  take  him 
by  the  hand.  Turn  the  sin  which  I  have  committed  to  good,  and 
make  the  wind  to  carry  off  my  transgression.  Forgive  my  sins,  and 
I  will  bow  before  thee." 

These  sinful  and  sorrowful  ones  have  not  reached  the 
stage  of  penitence  described  by  Dante  in  the  Purgatorio, 
of  those  who  sought  to  endure  their  punishments  until 
completely  purified ;  e.g.  in  the  circle  of  the  gluttonous  :  — 


282  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

"All  the  folk  who  sing  weeping  because  of  following  their  appetite 
beyond  measure,  here  in  hunger  and  in  thirst  make  themselves  holy 
again.  The  odour  which  issues  from  the  apple  and  from  the  spray 
that  spreads  over  the  verdure  kindles  in  us  desire  to  eat  and  drink. 
And  not  once  only  as  we  circle  this  floor  is  our  pain  renewed.  I 
say  pain,  and  ought  to  say  solace,  for  that  will  leads  us  to  the 
tree  which  led  Christ  gladly  to  say  *Eli'  when  with  his  blood  he 
delivered  us." 

The  following  are  illustrations  of  prayers  still  petitional 
in  form,  but  for  blessings  purely  spiritual :  — 

"O  Lord,  who  hast  taught  us  that  all  our  doings  without  charity 

are  nothing  worth,  send  thy  Holy  Spirit  and  pour  into  our  hearts 

that  most  excellent  gift  of  charity,  the  very  bond  of  peace  and  of 

all  virtues,  without  which  whosoever  live  this  counted  dead  before 

thee." 

(Book  of  Common  Prayer,  1549.) 

"Grant  me,  I  beseech  Thee,  Almighty  and  most  Merciful  God, 
fervently  to  desire,  wisely  to  search  out,  and  perfectly  to  fulfil,  all 
that  is  well  pleasing  unto  Thee.  Order  Thou  my  worldly  condition 
to  the  glory  of  Thy  name ;  and,  of  all  that  Thou  requirest  me  to  do, 
grant  me  the  knowledge,  the  desire,  and  the  ability,  that  I  may  so 
fulfil  it  as  I  ought,  and  may  my  path  to  Thee,  I  pray,  be  safe,  straight- 
forward, and  perfect  to  the  end. 

"Give  me,  0  Lord,  a  steadfast  heart,  which  no  unworthy  affection 
may  drag  downwards ;  give  me  an  upright  heart,  which  no  unworthy 
purpose  may  tempt  aside. 

"Bestow  upon  me  also,  0  Lord,  my  God,  understanding  to  know 

Thee,  diligence  to  seek  Thee,  wisdom  to  find  Thee,  and  a  faithfulness 

that  may  finally  embrace  Thee,  —  Amen." 

St.  Thomas  Aquinas. 

"Enlarge  our  souls  with  a  divine  charity,  that  we  may  hope  all 

things,  endure  all  things;    and  become  messengers  of  Thy  healing 

mercy  to  the  grievances  and  infirmities  of  men.     In  all  things  attune 

our  hearts  to  the  holiness  and  harmony  of  Thy  kingdom,  and  hasten 

the  time  when  Thy  kingdom  shall  come,  and  Thy  will  be  done  on 

earth  as  it  is  in  heaven.    Amen." 

James  Maetineau. 

"I  ask  of  thee,  O  unspeakable  Spirit,  the  great  gift  of  infinity.  Be 
thou  my  head,  be  thou  my  heart;  do  thou  ever  grow  in  me.  Be 
thou  the  constraining  law  of  my  life,  my  holy  conscience,  and  compel 
me  to  follow  thee.  Make  to-day  different  from  yesterday  and  let 
me  ever  press  on  to  perfection." 

MOZOOMDAR. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  283 

Prayer  of  Socrates :  — 

That  the  gods  would  give  such  things  as  are  good,  for  they  know 
best  what  are  good. 

"0  sweet  Pan  and  ye  other  gods,  whoever  ye  be,  grant  to  me  to  be 
beautiful  within." 

Xenophon  in  "  Memorabilia." 

We  have  discovered  so  far  two  characteristics  of  prayer. 
First,  prayer  appears  to  have  about  it  something  of  the 
constraining  power  supposed  to  belong  to  the  old  magic 
rites  and  incantations;  and  secondly,  all  the  prayers 
we  have  so  far  examined  are  practical.  They  express  a 
request,  an  entreaty,  and  this  petition  is  either  positive 
or  negative,  ethical  or  non-ethical  and  materialistic,  as 
the  case  may  be ;  that  is,  it  varies  in  accordance  with  the 
conception  of  the  divine  being  to  whom  the  prayer  is  ad- 
dressed, and  with  the  idea  of  what  constitutes  beatitude. 

In  regard  to  the  first  characteristic,  the  incantations 
which  primitive  man  used  to  accompany  witchcraft 
rites  were  themselves  magic  formulae  of  compelling 
power.  That  something  of  this  old  magic  still  survives 
in  more  spiritual  ideas  is  seen  not  only  in  many  of  our 
customs  for  bringing  good  luck  or  for  warding  off  ills, 
but  also  in  prayers  and  religious  exercises  themselves. 

People  not  only  hang  the  horseshoe  over  the  door  for 
luck,  avoid  thirteen  at  table,  wear  bits  of  coral  as  a  charm 
to  ward  oS  the  evil  eye,  but  in  Catholic  lands  the  vo- 
tive offering  at  the  wayside  shrine  still  betrays  the  hope 
that  thus  some  grace  may  be  obtained ;  or  in  a  church, 
the  lighted  candles  or  flowers  before  the  image  of  Virgin 
or  saint  bespeak  the  prayer  of  some  heart  that  through 
these  means  a  boon  may  be  granted.^  The  peasant  woman 
who  dips  her  fingers  in  the  holy  water  believes  that  thus 
disease  may  be  cured  and  other  ills  banished ;  the  devotee 
telling  the  beads  of  his  rosary  thinks  to  guard  from  heresy 
and  to  ^'  win  merit "  ;  by  making  the  sign  of  the  cross,  it  is 

*  "Eeoutez,  Sainte  Marie 

Je  donnerai  mon  beau  collier, 


284  THE   DKAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

held,  evil  spirits  are  driven  away ;  by  the  doing  of  penances 
that  some  guilt  may  be  cleansed.  In  the  Catholic  rite  of 
the  Mass  there  is  magic  efficacy  in  the  supposed  trans- 
formation of  the  bread  and  wine  into  the  body  and  blood 
of  Christ. 

In  some  Protestant  sects,  too,  the  rites  of  baptism  and 
of  communion  seem  to  be  considered  not  symbolic  so 
much  as  an  actual  washing  away  of  sin.^  And  indeed 
in  all  forms  of  sacrifice,  even  that  of  the  broken  and 
contrite  spirit,  something  is  supposed  to  be  accomplished, 
as  in  the  savage  days,  by  binding  on  an  amulet,  sorcerers 
and  demons  were  driven  away;  or  in  the  Vedas,  by 
offering  a  cow,  a  gift  of  barley  or  drink  of  soma  to  Agni 
or  Indra,  favor  was  obtained,  gifts  bestowed. 

And  what  is  true  of  the  sacrificial  rites  is  true  of  the 
prayers  (corresponding  to  the  magical  incantations)  which 
accompany  them.  By  crying  aloud  with  the  voice,  by 
supplication  and  entreaty,  the  divine  being  will  be  com- 
pelled to  hearken  and  respond,  as  in  Psalm  86  :  — 

"Bow  down  thy  ear,  0  Lord,  and  answer  me; 
For  I  am  poor  and  needy. 

Si  vous  ferez  rapporter, 
Revenir  mon  cher  Pedro." 

(From  Songs  of  the  Pyrenees.) 
See  also  the  ballad  of  Victor  Hugo  called  "  La  Fiancee  du  Timbalier." 
The  whole  poem  appropriate  to  the  present  hour  of  1914. 
"  J'ai  dit  a  Notre  Abbe :  Messire 
Priez  bien  pour  tous  nos  soldats  I  — 
Et,  comme  on  sait  qu'il  le  desire, 
J'ai  brule  trois  cierges  de  cire 
Sur  la  ohasse  de  saint  Gildas. 

"  A  Notre-Dame  de  Lorette 
J'ai  promis  dans  mon  noir  chagrin, 
D'attachee  sur  ma  gorgerette 
Fermee  a  la  vue  indiscrete 
Les  coquilles  du  pelirin. 

*  "Grant  us  therefore,  gracious  Lord,  so  to  eat  this  flesh  of  thy  dear 
son  Jesus  Christ,  and  to  drink  his  blood,  that  our  sinful  bodies  may  be 
made  clean  by  his  body,  and  our  souls  washed  through  his  most  precious 
blood,  that  we  may  evermore  dwell  in  him  and  he  in  us."  (Commim- 
lon  service  of  Episcopal  Church.) 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE ITS   FORMS  285 

O  thou  my  God,  save  thy  servant  that  trusteth  in  thee. 

Be  merciful  unto  me,  0  Lord ; 

For  unto  thee  do  I  cry  all  the  day  long.  .  .  . 

Give  ear,  0  Lord,  unto  my  prayer ; 

And  hearken  unto  the  voice  of  my  supplications. 

In  the  day  of  my  trouble  I  will  caU  upon  thee ; 

For  thou  wUt  answer  me. 

Thou,  0  Lord,  art  a  God  full  of  compassion  and  gracious, 

Slow  to  anger  and  plenteous  in  mercy  and  truth. 

O  turn  unto  me  and  have  mercy  upon  me ; 

Give  thy  strength  unto  thy  servant, 

Show  me  a  token  for  good." 

The  above  illustrations,  together  with  what  has  gone 
before,  suggests  the  possibility  of  combining  the  two  ele- 
ments we  have  so  far  discovered  as  belonging  to  prayer 
and  of  offering  as  a  trial  definition  of  the  essence  of  prayer 
the  following:  cries  and  supplications  which  shall  com- 
pel a  blessing  or  at  least  a  response  (positive  or  negative) 
from  the  divine  being  or  beings  to  whom  the  cries  are 
addressed :  — 

"I  will  not  let  thee  go  except  thou  bless  me." 

Can  we  say  then  that  all  prayer  is  practical,  its  essence 
a  compelling  request,  supplication,  entreaty? 

There  are  prayers  which  can  hardly  be  put  in  this 
pragmatic  class.  I  mean  prayers  of  a  mystical  character, 
which  express  rather  the  soul's  relation  to  the  divine  in 
the  sense  of  union,  trust,  and  outpouring  of  its  need,  or  of 
its  sense  of  joyfulness  and  thanksgiving,  or  in  confession  of 
sin;  of  adoration,  or  communion — an  actual  talking  with 
God,  —  which  is  so  characteristic  of  St.  Augustine's  ^^Con- 
fessions," of  ^'The  Imitation"  of  Thomas  a  Kempis,  of  the 
hymns  of  George  Herbert,  and  of  the  Book  of  Jeremiah. 

Class  III.  Prayer  as  Communion.  —  Let  us  turn, 
then,  to  the  third  type  of  prayer.  This  type,  however 
it  may  express  itself  in  the  petitional  form,  is  not  so  much 
a  prayer  jor  anything  as  it  is  an  attitude  of  mind  and 
spirit  —  a  sense  of  communion  and  union  with  the  spirit 
of  the  universe  which  takes  the  attitude  either  of  a  with- 


286  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

drawing  into  the  inmost  recesses  of  the  personal  life,  as 
in  the  essentially  mystic  type  of  prayer — ('^Recollec- 
tion'^ of  Catholics,  '^  Entering  the  Silence ''  of  the  Mind 
Curists) ;  or,  it  is  a  dual  communion  as  with  another 
person,  the  Friend  or  ''Great  Companion '^  as  in  the 
prayers  of  George  Herbert ;  or  an  expansion  towards  the 
source  of  life  and  strength,  which  we  get  from  some  of 
the  poems  of  Whitman ;  or  an  essentially  ethical  attitude 
of  self-discipline  and  consecrated  activity. 

In  a  general  way  the  prayers  of  St.  Augustine  are  as 
beautiful  as  any,  and  a  classic  instance  of  this  type. 
The  same  thing  is  true  of  some  of  the  Psalms.  The  fol- 
lowing illustration  from  St.  Augustine  combines  the 
various  attitudes  noted,  and  suggests  what  is  supposed 
to  be  the  efficacy  of  this  type  of  prayer :  — 

"Late  have  I  loved  Thee,  O  Thou  Eternal  Truth  and  Goodness; 
late  have  I  sought  Thee,  my  Father !  But  Thou  didst  seek  me,  and 
when  Thou  shinedst  forth  upon  me,  then  I  knew  Thee  and  learnt  to 
love  Thee.  I  thank  Thee,  O  my  Light,  that  Thou  didst  thus  shine 
upon  me ;  that  Thou  didst  teach  my  soul  what  Thou  wouldst  be  to 
me,  and  didst  incline  Thy  face  in  pity  unto  me.  Thou,  Lord,  hast 
become  my  hope,  my  Comfort,  my  Strength,  my  All.  In  Thee  doth 
my  soul  rejoice.  The  darkness  vanished  from  before  my  eyes,  and  I 
beheld  Thee,  the  Sun  of  Righteousness.  When  I  loved  darkness,  I 
knew  Thee  not,  but  wandered  on  from  night  to  night.  But  Thou 
didst  lead  me  out  of  that  blindness ;  Thou  didst  take  me  by  the  hand 
and  call  me  to  Thee,  and  now  I  can  thank  Thee,  and  Thy  mighty  voice 
which  hath  penetrated  to  my  inmost  heart.    Amen." 

The  following  Hindoo  prayers  are  of  the  same  general 
type:  — 

"Lord,  look  upon  me,  nought  can  I  do  myself.  Whither  can  I 
go;  to  whom  but  Thee  can  I  tell  sorrows?  Often  have  I  turned  my 
face  from  Thee  and  grasped  the  things  of  this  world,  but  Thou  art  the 
font  of  mercy,  turn  not  Thy  face  from  me. 

"They  who  never  ask  anything  but  simply  love,  You,  in  their 
heart  abide  forever,  for  this  is  Your  very  home." 

It  is  difficult,  however,  to  separate  the  prayers  of  this 
class,  which  we  may   call  mystical  prayers,   from  the 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  287 

examples  last  given,  i.e.  prayers  for  spiritual  good,  for 
nearly  all  prayers  seem  to  contain  a  request  in  some  form, 
which  leads  one  to  wonder  if  there  is  not  in  petition  some- 
thing which  is  fundamental  to  the  meaning  of  prayer. 

Saint  Thomas  Aquinas  in  his  section  on  prayer  (Oratio) 
in  the  Summa  says,  quoting  Damascenus :  ^'  Oratio  est 
ascensus  mentis  in  Deum'^  (Prayer  is  the  lifting  of  the 
mind  to  God),  and  following  the  epistle  to  Timothy  he 
says:  '^Prayer  is  made  up  of  supplications  (Obsecra- 
tiones),  orationes,  intercessions  (intercessiones),  and 
thanksgivings  (actiones  gratiae) ;  but  prayer  (^  Oratio ') 
is  essentially  ^Ascensus  mentis  in  Deum,'''  and  this  defi- 
nition seems  to  have  a  wider  connotation  than  request, 
petition,  or  supplication. 

Indeed,  in  the  mystical  type  of  prayer  we  find  often 
the  negation  of  all  particular  demands,^  as  in  the  prayers 
of  Christina  Rossetti  and  Thomas  a  Kempis  ^ ;  and  already 
we  have  seen  that  'Haboo"  —  ^'Thou  shalt  not''  — was 
characteristic  of  savage  religious  customs  and  rites. 

The  following  are  some  examples  of  the  more  mystical 
type :  — 

ILLUSTRATIONS  FROM  THE  GATHAS  OF  ZOROASTER 

"Arise  to  me,  0  Ahura ! 
Through  Devotion  send  me  power. 

Most  bounteous  spirit  Magda,  for  my  good  invocations  offering. 
And  mighty  strength  give  Asha,  and  thrift,   Lord  with  Thy  Good 
Mind! 

"For  grace,  for  light,  I  see  Thee  fully,  reveal  to  me,  Magda,  Thy 
stature. 
And  Thy  Kingdom's  blessings.  Lord ;  the  rewards  of  thine  are  good- 
minded;   yes,  now,  0  thou  bounteous  Devotion, 
Through  the  law  light  up  our  souls ! " 

(Consecration  to  Magda.) 

"Asha  the  only  hope, 
Aye  doth  my  soul  attain /a  real  defender 

*  Abba,  Father,  all  things  are  possible  unto  thee ;  remove  this  cup 
from  me ;  albeit  not  what  I  will,  but  what  thou  wilt.     Mark  14 :  36. 

*  Such  prayers  have  the  spirit  of  the  Hindoo  prayer,  p.  263,  footnote. 


288  THE    DRAMA    OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

For  self  and  flock 

Can  I /a  saviour  find 

Other  than  Holiness  (Asha)  or  thee,  Ahura. 

Invoked,  desired  one,  or 

Thy  Best  Mind!" 

"That  thou  art  holy,  O  all-wise  Ruler,  I  have  seen  when  the  best 
of  spirits  came  to  me,  when  by  thy  words  I  first  was  taught.  Who- 
ever gives  himself  to  thee  will  suffer  sorrow  at  the  hands  of  men,  but 
whatsoever  thou  sayest  is  best,  that  shall  be  done.  I  know  why  it 
goes  ill  with  me,  and  I  make  my  complaint  to  thee.  Look  thou  into 
it,  O  Lord,  and  give  me  joy  such  as  a  friend  offers  to  a  friend." 

At  the  shrine  to  Apollo  at  Delphi  were  these  inscriptions : 

"For  the  good  one  drop  suffices,  but  for  the  bad  all  the  waves  of 
the  sea  cannot  wash  their  sins  away."  "Know  thyself."  "Nothing 
beyond  measure." 

"Govern  all  by  Thy  wisdom,  O  Lord,  so  that  my  soul  may  always 
be  serving  Thee  as  Thou  dost  will,  and  not  as  I  may  choose.  Do  not 
punish  me,  I  beseech  Thee,  by  granting  that  which  I  wish  or  ask,  if 
it  offend  Thy  love,  which  would  always  live  in  me.  Let  me  die  to 
myself,  that  so  I  may  serve  Thee ;  let  me  live  to  Thee,  who  in  Thy- 
self art  the  true  Life.    Amen."  <^      ^ 

—  St.  Theresa. 

"O  Lord,  Thou  knowest  what  is  best  for  us,  let  this  or  that  be 
done,  as  Thou  shalt  please.  Give  what  Thou  wilt,  and  when  Thou 
wilt.  Deal  with  me  as  Thou  thinkest  good,  and  as  best  pleaseth 
Thee.  Set  me  where  Thou  wilt,  and  deal  with  me  in  all  things  just 
as  Thou  wilt.  Behold  I  am  Thy  servant,  prepared  for  all  things; 
for  I  desire  not  to  live  unto  myself,  but  unto  Thee ;  and  Oh,  that  I 
could  do  it  worthily  and  perfectly !  Amen." 
— Thomas  a  Kempis. 

"We  ask  not,  O  Father,  for  health  or  life.  We  make  an  offering 
to  Thee  of  all  our  days.  Thou  hast  counted  them.  We  would  know 
nothing  more.  All  we  ask  is  to  die  rather  than  live  unfaithful  to 
Thee ;  and,  if  it  be  Thy  will  that  we  depart,  let  us  die  in  patience  and 
love.  Almighty  God,  who  boldest  in  Thy  hand  the  keys  of  the  grave 
to  open  and  close  it  at  Thy  will,  give  us  not  life,  if  we  shall  love  it  too 
well.     Living  or  dying  we  would  be  Thine." 

—  Francois  de  la  Mothe  Fenelon. 

"O  Lord,  my  God,  Light  of  the  blind  and  Strength  of  the  weak; 
yea,  also.  Light  of  those  that  see,  and  Strength  of  the  strong ;  hearken 
unto  my  soul,  and  hear  it  crying  out  of  the  depths. 

"0  Lord,  help  us  to  turn  and  seek  Thee;   for  Thou  hast  not  for- 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  289 

saken  Thy  creatures  as  we  have  forsaken  Thee,  our  Creator.  Let 
us  turn  and  seek  Thee,  for  we  know  Thou  art  here  in  our  hearts,  when 
we  confess  to  Thee,  when  we  cast  ourselves  upon  Thee,  and  weep  m 
Thy  bosom,  after  all  our  rugged  ways;  and  Thou  dost  gently  wipe 
away  our  tears,  and  we  weep  the  more  for  joy;  because  Thou,  Lord, 
who  madest  us,  dost  remake  and  comfort  us. 

"Hear,  Lord,  my  prayer  and  grant  that  I  may  most  entirely  love 
Thee,  and  do  Thou  rescue  me,  O  Lord,  from  every  temptation,  even 
unto  the  end.    Amen."  —  St.  Augustine. 

Here  are  some  modern  instances :  — 

"Lord,  take  my  lips  and  speak  through  them;  take  my  mind  and 
think  through  it ;  take  my  heart  and  set  it  on  fire."    -y^   Aitken. 

"I  ask  neither  for  health  nor  for  riches,  for  life  nor  for  death ;  but 
that  you  may  dispose  of  my  health  and  my  sickness,  my  life  and  my 
death,  for  your  glory,  for  my  salvation,  and  for  the  use  of  the  church 
and  of  your  saints,  of  whom  I  would  by  your  grace  be  one.  You 
alone  know  what  is  expedient  for  me ;  do  with  me  according  to  your 
will.  Give  to  me,  or  take  away  from  me,  only  conform  my  will  to 
yours."  (Prayer  of  Pascal  quoted  by  James.) 

"0  Thou  unseen  source  of  peace  and  holiness,  may  we  come  to 
Thy  secret  place  and  be  filled  with  thy  solemn  light.  As  we  come 
to  thee  how  can  we  but  remember  when  we  have  been  drawn  aside 
from  the  straight  and  narrow  way,  when  we  have  not  walked  lovingly 
with  each  other  and  humbly  with  thee,  when  we  have  feared  what  is 
not  terrible,  and  wished  for  what  is  not  holy  in  thy  sight.  In  our 
weakness  be  thou  the  quickening  power  of  life.  Arise  within  our 
hearts  as  healing  strength  and  joy.  Make  us  obedient  to  thy  pure 
and  righteous  thought.  Inspire  us  with  the  divine  faith,  subdue  us 
to  the  lowly  practice  of  those  who  have  lived  as  fellow-workers  with 
thee.  May  we  have  only  one  care  —  to  abate  the  transitory  ill  and 
be  faithful  to  the  everlasting  good.  Day  by  day  may  we  grow  in 
faith,  in  self-denial  and  charity,  in  the  purity  of  heart  by  which  we 
may  see  thee,  and  the  larger  life  of  love  to  which  thou  callest  us." 

James  Martineau. 

"Grant  unto  us  —  Thy  peace  that  passeth  understanding;  that 
we  amid  the  storms  and  troubles  of  this  our  life,  may  rest  in  Thee, 
knowing  that  all  things  are  in  Thee,  imder  Thy  care,  governed  by 
thy  wUl,  guarded  by  thy  love ;  so  that  with  a  quiet  heart  we  may  see 
the  storms  of  life,  the  cloud  and  the  thick  darkness,  ever  rejoicing  to 
know  that  the  darkness  and  the  light  are  both  alike  to  Thee.  Guide, 
guard  and  govern  us  even  to  the  end,  that  none  of  us  may  fail  to  lay 

hold  upon  the  immortal  life." 

George  Dawson. 


290  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

"Saviour  of  sinners!  when  a  poor  woman,  laden  with  sins,  went 
out  to  the  well  to  draw  water,  she  found  Thee  sitting  at  the  well. 
She  knew  Thee  not ;  she  had  not  sought  Thee ;  her  mind  was  dark, 
her  life  was  unholy.  But  Thou  didst  speak  to  her.  Thou  didst  teach 
her ;  Thou  didst  show  her  that  her  life  lay  open  before  Thee,  and  yet 
Thou  wast  ready  to  give  her  that  blessing  which  she  had  never  sought. 
Jesus!  Thou  art  in  the  midst  of  us,  and  Thou  knowest  all  men;  if 
there  is  any  here  like  that  poor  woman  —  if  their  minds  are  dark, 
their  lives  unholy,  if  they  have  come  out  not  seeking  Thee,  not  desir- 
ing to  be  taught,  deal  with  them  according  to  the  free  mercy  which 
Thou  didst  show  to  her.  Speak  to  them,  Lord;  open  their  ears  to 
Thy  message ;  bring  their  sins  to  their  minds,  and  make  them  thirst 
for  that  salvation  which  Thou  art  ready  to  give.  Lord,  Thou  art 
with  Thy  people  still ;  they  see  Thee  in  the  night  watches,  and  their 
hearts  burn  within  them  as  Thou  talkest  with  them  by  the  way.  And 
Thou  art  near  to  those  who  have  not  known  Thee ;  open  their  eyes 
that  they  may  see  Thee  —  see  Thee  weeping  over  them,  and  saying  — 
'Ye  will  not  come  imto  me  that  ye  might  have  life*  —  see  Thee  hang- 
ing on  the  cross  and  saying  —  'Father,  forgive  them,  for  they  know 
not  what  they  do'  —  see  Thee  as  Thou  wilt  come  again  in  Thy  glory 
to  judge  them  at  the  last.    Amen." 

George  Eliot,  Prayer  from  "Adam  Bede." 

"0  Lord,  the  portion  of  our  inheritance,  give  us  grace,  I  pray  Thee, 

never  to  aim' at  or  desire  anything  out  of  Thee.    What  we  can  enjoy 

in  Thee,  give  us  according  to  Thy  will;   what  we  cannot,  deny  us. 

Amen." 

Christina  G.  Rossetti. 

"0  Lord,  who  art  as  the  shadow  of  a  great  rock  in  a  weary  land, 

who  beholdest  Thy  weak  creatures,  weary  of  labor,  weary  of  pleasure, 

weary  of  hope  deferred,  weary  of  seU,  in  Thine  abundant  compassion 

and  unutterable  tenderness,  bring  us,  we  pray  Thee,  unto  Thy  rest. 

Amen." 

Christina  G.  Rossetti. 

"0  Lord,  grant  us  grace  never  to  parley  with  temptation,  never 
to  tamper  with  conscience ;  never  to  spare  the  right  eye,  or  hand,  or 
foot  that  is  a  snare  to  us ;  never  to  lose  our  souls,  though  in  exchange 
we  should  gain  the  whole  world.    Amen." 

Christina  G.  Rossetti. 

Closely  related  to  this  type  are  confessional  prayers, 
such,  e.gr.,  as  the  general  confession  in  the  communion 
service  in  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer.  The  individual 
prayer  too  is  very  often  a  confession. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  291 

"Almighty  God  —  We  acknowledge  and  bewail  our  manifold 
sins  which  we  from  time  to  time  most  grievously  have  committed,  by 
thought,  word  and  deed,  against  thy  divine  majesty,  provoking  most 
justly  thy  wrath  and  indignation  against  us.  We  do  earnestly  repent 
and  are  heartily  sorry  for  these  our  misdoings ;  the  remembrance  of 
which  is  grievous  unto  us.  Have  mercy  upon  us,  have  mercy  upon 
us,  most  merciful  Father.  ..." 

Prayer  is  often  considered  as  an  individual  relation,  — 
an  intercourse  between  the  individual  soul  and  its  God. 

"Thou,  when  thou  pray  est,  enter  into  the  inner  chamber  and  pray 
to  the  Father  in  secret." 

But  as  the  above  prayer  (Book  of  Common  Prayer)  sug- 
gests, prayer  has  also  its  social  aspects. 

I .  We  find  this  social  aspect  of  prayer,  for  instance.  First, 
in  prayers  used  in  public  worship  where  men  pray  to- 
gether, and  what  is  asked  for  one  is  asked  for  all;  or, 
again,  we  find  the  social  aspect  in  a  general  confession  or 
thanksgiving. 
A  prayer  for  the  whole  human  race :  — 

"0  Eternal  God,  the  Father  of  all  mankind,  in  whom  we  live  and 
move  and  have  our  being;  have  mercy  on  the  whole  human  race. 
Pity  their  ignorance,  their  foolishness,  their  weakness,  their  sin; 
sheep  wandering  on  the  mountain  without  a  guide.  Set  up  an  en- 
sign for  the  nations,  O  Lord,  and  bring  them  to  Thy  glorious  rest. 
Let  the  earth  be  filled  with  the  knowledge  of  the  Lord  as  the  waters 
cover  the  sea.  Hasten  thy  kingdom,  0  Lord,  and  bring  in  everlasting 
righteousness,  for  the  honor  of  thy  Son,  our  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus 
Christ.    Amen." 

"Bind  us  to  one  another,  0  Thou  Holiest,  by  a  common  search 
for  thy  ways  and  a  common  thirst  for  thy  spirit,  and  raise  us  to  some 
worthiness  of  the  communion  we  seek  with  the  wise  and  good  of  every 
nation  and  of  every  age." 

"We  beseech  Thee,  Lord,  to  behold  us  with  favor,  folk  of  many 
families  and  nations  gathered  together  in  the  peace  of  this  roof,  weak 
men  and  women  subsisting  under  the  covert  of  Thy  patience.  Be 
patient  still ;  suffer  us  yet  a  while  longer  with  our  broken  purposes 
of  good,  with  our  idle  endeavors  against  evil,  suffer  us  a  while  longer 
to  endure  and  (if  it  may  be)  help  us  to  do  better.  Bless  to  us  our 
extraordinary  mercies;   if  the  day  come  when  these  must  be  taken, 


292  THE   DRAMA    OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

brace  us  to  play  the  man  under  affliction.  Be  with  our  friends,  be 
with  ourselves.  Go  with  each  of  us  to  rest ;  if  any  wake,  temper  to 
them  the  dark  hours  of  watching ;  and  when  the  day  returns,  return 
to  us,  our  Sun  and  Comforter,  and  call  us  up  with  morning  faces  and 
with  morning  hearts  —  eager  to  labor  —  eager  to  be  happy,  if  happi- 
ness shall  be  our  portion  —  and  if  the  day  be  marked  for  sorrow,  strong 

to  endure  it.    Amen."  _  x  o. 

KoBERT  Louis  Stevenson. 

From  the  Indian  Daily  Prayer  for  the  World :  — 

"In  the  East  and  in  the  West 
In  the  North,  and  in  the  South, 
Let  all  things  that  are. 
Without  enemies,  without  obstacles. 
Having  no  sorrow,  and  attaining  cheerfulness. 
Move  forward  freely. 
Each  in  his  own  path ! " 

II.  Intercessions  and  masses  for  the  dead  are  prayers 
social  in  character.  There  is  the  behef  in  the  CathoHc 
church,  at  least,  that  the  saints  in  heaven  and  on  earth 
are  able  to  intercede  for  those  in  pm-gatory  or  on  earth. 
^'Ora  pro  nobis."  Dante's  ^^Purgatorio"  abounds  in 
instances  of  this  mediatory  aspect  of  prayer.  For 
instance :  — 

Virgil  symbolizing  human  reason,  goes  to  aid  the 
wanderer  at  the  entreaty  of  Beatrice,  grace,  or  divine 
wisdom. 

"One  who  withdrew  from  singing  Hallelujah,  to  rescue  the  wanderer 
from  the  dark  wood." 

And  all  those  they  meet  in  purgatory 

"  pregar  pur  ch'  altri  preghi 
Si  che  s'  avacci  1  lor  divenir  sante." 

"Have  compassion,  we  beseech  Thee,  O  Lord,  upon  all  those  whose 
hearts  are  touched  with  sorrow,  whose  spirits  are  troubled  or  cast 
down  within  them.  0  Lord,  remember  those  to  whom  the  burdens 
of  this  life  bring  dimness  or  darkness  of  soul.  Send  them  help  from 
above,  and  have  mercy  upon  all  who  suffer  in  body  or  mind,  from 
whatever  cause.    O  Lord,  have  mercy  upon  them  continually.    Amen. ' ' 

"We  beseech  Thee,  O  Lord,  remember  all  for  good;  have  mercy 
upon  all,  O  God.    Remember  every  soul  who  being  in  any  affliction, 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  293 

trouble  or  agony,  stands  in  need  of  Thy  mercy  and  help,  all  who  are 
in  necessity  or  distress ;  all  who  love  or  hate  us."  ^ 

With  the  awakening  of  the  social  consciousness  of 
modern  times,  there  is  a  new  emphasis  on  the  social  in 
religion.  A  recent  book  of  prayers  (called  ^^  Prayers  of 
the  Social  Awakening"  by  Walter  Rauschenbusch)  has, 
besides  general  social  prayers,  prayers  for  special  social 
groups.     Here  is  one  — 

III.  A  Prayer  for  Workingmen  :  — 

"  0  God,  thou  mightiest  worker  of  the  universe,  source  of  all  strength 
and  author  of  all  unity,  we  pray  thee  for  our  brothers,  the  industrial 
workers  of  the  nation.  As  their  work  binds  them  together  in  common 
toil  and  danger,  may  their  hearts  be  knit  together  in  a  strong  sense  of 
their  common  interests  and  destiny.  Help  them  to  realize  that  the 
injury  of  one  is  the  concern  of  all,  and  that  the  welfare  of  all  must  be 
the  aim  of  every  one.  If  any  of  them  is  tempted  to  sell  the  birth- 
right of  his  class  for  a  mess  of  pottage  for  himself,  give  him  a  wider 
outlook  and  a  nobler  sympathy  with  his  fellows.  Teach  them  to  keep 
step  in  a  steady  onward  march,  and  in  their  own  way  to  fulfil  the  law 
of  Christ  by  bearing  the  common  burdens. 

"Grant  the  organizations  of  labor  quiet  patience  and  prudence  in 
all  disputes,  and  fairness  to  see  the  other  side.  Save  them  from  malice 
and  bitterness.  Save  them  from  the  headlong  folly  which  ruins  a 
fair  cause,  and  give  them  wisdom  resolutely  to  put  aside  the  two- 
edged  sword  of  violence  that  turns  on  those  who  seize  it.  Raise  up 
for  them  still  more  leaders  of  able  mind  and  large  heart,  and  give 
them  grace  to  follow  the  wiser  counsel. 

"When  they  strive  for  leisure  and  health  and  a  better  wage,  do 
thou  grant  their  cause  success,  but  teach  them  not  to  waste  their  gain 
on  fleeting  passions,  but  to  use  it  in  building  fairer  homes  and  nobler 
manhood.  Grant  all  classes  of  our  nation  a  larger  comprehension  for 
the  aspirations  of  labor  and  for  the  courage  and  worth  of  these  our 
brothers,  that  we  may  cheer  them  in  then*  struggles  and  understand 
them  even  in  their  sins.  And  may  the  upward  climb  of  Labor,  its 
defeats  and  its  victories,  in  the  farther  reaches  bless  all  the  classes  of 
our  nation,  and  build  up  for  the  republic  of  the  future  a  great  body  of 
workers,  strong  of  limb,  clear  of  mind,  fair  in  temper,  glad  to  labor, 
conscious  of  their  worth,  and  striving  together  for  the  final  brother- 
hood of  all  men." 

» Lancelot  Andrews,  1555-1626. 


294  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Another  example  of  a  social  prayer  is  Dante^s  version 
of  the  Lord's  Prayer,  as  prayed  by  the  proud.  Those 
who  had  been  so  self-centred  and  isolated  in  Hell,  here 
express  in  their  prayer  universal  fellowship  and  the 
complete  abandonment  of  self-seeking. 

"O  our  Father  who  art  in  Heaven,  not  circumscribed,  but  through 
the  greater  love  which  to  the  first  effects  on  high  Thou  hast,  praised 
be  Thy  name  and  Thy  power  by  every  creature,  even  as  it  is  befitting 
to  render  thanks  to  Thy  sweet  influence.  May  the  peace  of  Thy 
Kingdom  come  towards  us,  for  we  to  it  cannot  of  ourselves,  if  it  come 
not,  with  all  our  striving.  As  of  their  will  Thine  angels,  singing 
Hosanna,  make  sacrifice  to  Thee,  so  may  men  make  of  theirs.  Give 
us  this  day  the  daily  manna,  without  which  through  this  rough  desert 
he  backward  goes,  who  toils  most  to  go  on.  And  as  we  pardon  every- 
one for  the  wrong  that  we  have  suffered,  even  do  Thou,  benignant, 
pardon  and  regard  not  our  desert.  Our  virtue  which  is  easily  over- 
come, put  not  to  proof  with  the  old  adversary,  but  deliver  from  him 
who  so  spurs  it.  This  last  prayer,  dear  Lord,  truly  is  not  made  for 
ourselves,  for  it  is  not  needful,  but  for  those  who  behind  us  have 
remained." 

Or  again,  the  prayer  of  the  writer  of  Ephesians  for  his 
brethren  and  disciples. 

"For  this  cause  I  bow  my  knees  unto  the  Father  from  whom  every 
family  in  heaven  and  on  earth  is  named,  that  he  would  grant  you, 
according  to  the  riches  of  his  glory,  that  ye  may  be  strengthened  with 
power  through  his  Spirit  in  the  inward  man ;  that  Christ  may  dwell 
in  your  hearts  through  faith;  to  the  end  that  ye  being  rooted  and 
grounded  in  love,  may  be  strong  to  apprehend  with  all  the  saints  what 
is  the  breadth  and  length  and  height  and  depth,  and  to  know  the  love 
of  Christ  which  passeth  knowledge,  that  we  may  be  filled  unto  all  the 
fulness  of  God." 

All  these  prayers  show  that  prayer  may  be  a  social  as 
well  as  an  individual  relation  and  thus  again  emphasis 
is  given  to  the  social  elements  in  religious  experience  as 
an  whole. 

Class  IV.  Divination.  —  Finally,  an  intermediate 
type  of  prayer  may  be  noted,  namely,  in  certain  processes 
of  divination  which  are  in  part  prayer  and  in  part  ex- 
periment and  observation   of  the  ways  of  nature.     Li 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  295 

the  interpretation  of  omens,  such  as  sneezing,  the  flight 
of  birds,  the  phases  of  the  moon,  dreams,  etc.,  a  certain 
order  of  analogy  is  followed,  but  much  is  based  on  chance 
coincidence.  To  sneeze  to  the  right  is  lucky,  to  the  left 
unlucky;  to  meet  an  owl  or  raven  unlucky,  to  meet  a 
hawk  is  lucky.  To  undertake  any  activity  at  the  time 
of  the  waxing  moon  will  insure  good  fortune,  at  the  waning 
moon  ill.  To  dream  of  gold  is  good,  of  silver  bad.  "  Fri- 
day night's  dream  on  Saturday  told  is  sure  to  come  true.'' 

In  divination  proper  the  diviner  prepares  the  experi- 
ment, repeats  his  charm  formula,  incantation,  or  prayer, 
and  observes  what  takes  place.  Such  divining  is  by 
flight  of  birds,  examination  of  entrails  of  animals,  by  fire, 
or  by  water, ^  by  lots,  charms,  by  arrangement  of  pebbles  ^  or 
points  on  the  ground  and  sometimes  by  crystal  gazing. 
King  James  in  his  ^'Demonology ''  describes  instances  of 
this  last-mentioned  process.  While  the  conjurer  repeats  his 
charm  and  the  invocation  belonging  to  the  special  spirit  in 
question,  the  seer  (a  person  of  a  perfectly  pure  life)  gazes 
into  the  beryl  or  crystal,  and  sees  the  answer  revealed 
in  figures  or  types;  rarely  he  hears  the  voice  of  the  spirit. 
Sometimes  the  divination  is  with  circles  joined  together 
with  use  of  holy  water,  and  the  rite  must  be  performed 
on  special  days  and  with  the  muttering  of  long  prayers. 

Interpretation  of  the  will  or  caprice  of  the  deity,  by 
means  of  oracles  and  omens,  plays  a  prominent  part  in 
Babylonian  religion.^  The  nature  of  the  Babylonian 
prayer  was  a  request  or  petition  for  the  removal  of  an 
evil  or  the  bestowal  of  a  blessing  —  hence  the  importance 
of  learning  the  intention  of  the  deity,  for  the  prayer  was 
useless  unless  there  was  a  response.     Besides  incantation 

1  In  his  "  Pirate  "  Seott  gives  a  picturesque  account  of  divination 
by  means  of  fire  and  of  melted  lead,  and  at  the  same  time  an  instance 
of  cure  of  disease  by  sympathetic  magic.  See  also  the  witches'  cal- 
dron in  "  Macbeth  "  for  example  of  divination. 

2  See  Dante,  **  Purgatorio,"  Canto  XIX,  v.  4  on  "  Maggior  Fortuna." 

3  See  Jastrow's  account  of  Babylonian  ritual.  Jastrow,  ^'Religion 
of  Babylon." 


296  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

and  offerings,  omens  are  required.  The  petitioner  seeks 
to  know :  will  the  magical  arts  —  the  rain  charms,  loosing 
of  knots,  burning  of  images  —  be  successful. 

Omens  are  introduced  into  prayers  in  Babylonian 
ritual;  here  is  one  accompanying  the  examination  of  a 
lamb :  — 

"By  virtue  of  this  sacrificial  lamb,  arise  and  grant  true  mercy, 
favorable  conditions  of  the  parts  of  the  animal,  a  declaration  favorable 
and  beneficial  be  ordained  by  thy  great  charity.  Grant  that  this  may 
come  to  pass.  To  thy  great  divinity,  O  Shamash !  great  lord !  May 
it  be  pleasing,  and  may  an  oracle  be  sent  in  answer !" 

An  interesting  illustration  of  this  type  is  that  of  the 
reports  of  the  astrologers  of  Babylon  to  the  king. 

Here  we  have  an  observation  of  nature  processes  such 
as  the  conjimction  of  planets,  the  relative  positions  of 
sun,  moon,  and  stars ;  appearance  of  ecUpses,  their  dura- 
tion and  extent;  halos,  etc.;  all  of  which  phenomena 
are  sources  of  omens.  Mathematical  calculations  are 
based  on  these  phenomena,  and  also  interpretations 
whose  motives  are  in  part  political,  but  largely  statistical, 
and  to  some  extent  escape  our  power  of  understanding 
altogether. 

OMENS   DIVINED   FROM    POSITION    OF  PLANETS,   ETC. 

"Sun  and  moon  are  seen  apart, 
The  king  of  the  country  will  manifest  wisdom." 

"On  the  fourteenth  day  sun  and  moon  are  seen  together, 
There  will  be  loyalty  in  the  land. 
The  gods  of  Babylonia  are  favorably  inclined, 
The  soldiery  will  be  in  accord  with  the  king's  desire, 
The  cattle  of  Babylonia  will  pasture  in  safety." 

From  Ishtar,  "Shummeresh." 

OMEN  FROM  ECLIPSES 

"On  the  fourteenth  an  eclipse  will  take  place;  it  is  evil  for  Elam 
and  Aharru,  lucky  for  the  king  my  lord ;  let  the  king  my  lord  rest 
happy." 

**  When  an  eclipse  happens  in  the  morning  watch,  and 
it  completes  the  watch,  a  north  wind  blowing,  the  sick 


\ 


THE   WAY   OP  LIFE  —  ITS  FORMS  297 

in  Akkad  will  recover.  .  .  .  When  an  eclipse  happens 
in  the  month  Sivan  out  of  its  time,  an  old  powerful  king 
will  die,  Ramman  will  inundate,  a  flood  will  come,  and 
Ramman  will  diminish  the  crops  of  the  land;  he  that 
goes  before  the  army  will  be  slain." 

Eclipses  were  an  omen  of  evil  of  some  kind  which 
could  only  be  averted  by  prayer. 

In  the  series  of  prayers  called  '' Lifting  of  the  Hand"  ^ 
are  given  certain  eclipse  formulae  to  be  recited  during  and 
after  eclipses  to  obtain  the  protection  of  the  gods. 

Eclipse  formula :  — 

"In  the  evil  of  the  eclipse  of  the  moon,  which  in  such  and  such  a 
month  on  such  and  such  a  day,  has  taken  place.  In  the  evil 
of  the  powers,  of  the  portents,  evil  and  not  good,  which  are  in 
my  palace  and  my  land. 

Have  turned  towards  thee !    I  have  established  thee  I 

Listen  to  the  incantation ! 

Before  Nabu  .  .  .  intercede  for  me. 

May  he  hearken  to  my  cry  at  the  word  of  thy  mouth ;  may  he  remove 
my  sighing ;  may  he  hear  my  supplication ! 

At  his  mighty  word  may  god  and  goddess  deal  graciously  with  me! 

May  the  sickness  of  my  body  be  torn  away ;  may  the  groaning  of  my 
flesh  be  consumed." 

In  general,  so  far  as  we  are  able  to  interpret  divination 
in  its  connection  with  prayer,  it  appears  to  rest  on  the 
importance  of  knowing  the  will  of  the  divinity,  or  the 
ways  of  behaving  of  natural  powers  and  nature  processes, 
in  order  that  the  human  individual  may  govern  his  acts 
and  make  his  petitions  accordingly.  Hence  the  close 
observation  of  natural  phenomena  and  order  of  events; 
of  chance  coincidence,  "what  happens,"  and  the  use  of 
the  statistical  method. 

Freeing  ourselves  from  all  presuppositions  as  to  what 
prayer  ought  to  mean  in  a  spiritual  religion,  we  have 
approached  the  subject  of  prayer  mth  open  minds.  Our 
investigation  shows  quite  clearly,  I  think,  in  all  the 
various  types  of  concrete  prayer  —  the  same  universal 

1  King,   ^'Babylonian  Sorcery  and  Magic." 


298  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

elements  which  in  an  earlier  chapter  we  found  to  belong 
to  religious  experience  generally.  In  the  Hindu  prayer 
quoted  above,  page  261,  these  elements  are  quite  explicitly 
stated. 

Our  concrete  illustrations  show  further  that  prayer 
may  be  either  a  social  or  an  individual  experience ;  that 
it  may  be  a  mystical  experience  and  that  it  may  be 
ethically  efficacious.  We  have  found,  moreover,  in  our 
examination  of  prayer  in  detail  all  these  groups  or  types 
of  prayer  with  their  distinguishing  characteristics  and 
motives  synthesized  and  blended  in  the  history  of  religious 
experience.  The  religious  rituals  of  India  and  Egypt 
are  pervaded  with  the  spirit  of  magic  practices.  In 
Babylonia-Assyrian  religion  it  is  especially  to  be  noted 
how  the  incantations  or  magical  tests  are  combined  with 
direct  appeals  to  the  gods. 

The  blending  of  magic  and  religion  survives  to-day  in 
the  customs  of  European  peasantry,  and  also  in  rites  of 
Christianity.  In  the  superstitions,  until  recently,  at  least, 
surviving  in  Scotland  and  England,^  charm  formulae  for 
exorcising  demons  and  witches  are  interwoven  with  the 
regular  language  of  Christian  prayer.  (In  the  instance 
quoted  from  Hardy,  above,  the  Lord's  prayer  was  re- 
peated backwards  as  a  charm.) 

The  mechanical  prayers  of  magic  efficacy  are  not 
confined  to  any  one  historical  period.  The  ''prayer 
mill"  of  the  Buddhist  grinds  out  magical  formulae  by 
the  thousand.  These  are  mechanical  prayers;  but  the 
same  thing  may  be  said  of  the  Catholic  rosary.  The 
prayers  are  addressed  to  the  Deity,  but  the  rosary  itself 
is  a  kind  of  charm  to  protect  against  heresy. 

The  votive  offerings  at  world-old  shrines  to-day  show 
the  survival  of  the  second  type  of  prayer  with  its  appeas- 
ing and  entreating  motives. 

In  the  Catholic  mass  all  the  tjrpes  of  prayer  appear. 

iSee  ^*The  Darker  Superstitions  of  Scotland."  "British  Antiqui- 
ties," Hazlett. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  299 

They  are  petitional,  ethical,  and  mystical,  and  at  the 
same  time  the  sacrifice  is  supposed  to  have  a  magic  effect. 

As  a  preliminary  observation  we  may  note  that  one 
thing  emerges  from  our  whole  empirical  study  of  prayer ; 
namely,  that  in  every  type  of  prayer  the  will  of  man  is 
in  itself  a  cooperating  cause.  In  the  rites  of  sympathetic 
magic,  primitive  man  believes  he  can  do  somewhat  to 
influence  the  powers  of  nature,  or  the  supernatural  beings 
dwelling  in  nature.  In  omens  and  divinations  certain 
rules  and  the  proper  prayers  must  be  carefully  observed 
(as  for  instance,  that  the  animal  examined  must  be  with- 
out blemish).  In  the  second  type  of  prayer  the  will  of 
the  deity  must  be  entreated  and  wooed  by  the  worshipper, 
and  he  must  offer  sacrifice.  Finally,  in  the  third  type, 
mystical  and  ethical,  it  is  quite  evident  that  very  much 
depends  on  the  attitude  of  the  finite  will. 

In  Hindu  thought  the  magical  power  of  prayer  came 
to  be  identified  with  Brahma,  for  this  was  what  the 
name  originally  meant.  And  Brahma  is  Atman  the 
spirit  in  every  man.  Thus  says  Professor  Hoffding, 
commenting  on  this:  'Hhe  innermost  ground  of  the 
world  in  Hindu  philosophy  is  one  with  the  highest  goal 
of  all  striving  or  is  striving  itself."  Yet  it  is  also  evident, 
I  think,  in  all  the  types  of  prayer  that  something  more 
and  other  than  the  human  will  is  involved. 

We  have  now  to  ask  what,  for  the  modern  consciousness 
and  for  a  spiritual  religious  experience,  the  various  motives 
which  we  have  found  in  prayer  can  mean.  Can  old-world 
magic  have  a  place  in  spiritual  prayer,  and  what  part  can 
petition  play  in  relation  to  the  already  perfect  will  of  a 
divine  being? 

If  in  the  more  spiritual  and  higher  types  of  prayer  the 
petitional  element  is  largely  eliminated,  even  though 
the  petitional  form  remains,  can  we  say  the  essence  of 
spiritual  prayer  is  communion;  and  if  so,  is  not  this 
to  make  prayer  static?    I  think  not.    First,   because 


300  THE   DRAMA  OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

such  coimnunion  implies  another^  i.e.  one  to  be  appealed 
to,  —  a  dual  relation,  —  and  this  is  perhaps  the  deeper 
ground  of  the  universaUty  of  the  petitional  form  in 
spiritual  prayer ;  hence  we  can  never  quite  reduce  prayer 
to  the  ''unio  mystica^'  of  absolute  absorption  in  the  divine, 
or  to  the  unconsciousness  of  Nirvana.  In  the  second 
place,  the  meaning  of  prayer  presupposes  a  response,  it 
presupposes  one  who  will  not  only  hear  but  answer.  Yet 
it  is  true  that  in  its  deepest  essence,  prayer  is  communion ; 
but  if  this  is  the  essence  of  prayer,  in  what  sense  can  we 
still  say  that  prayer  is  dynamic  and  efficacious?  for 
reUgion  still  holds  that  something  really  happens  through 
prayer,  that  prayer  works  changes  in  the  outer  world. 
An  illustration  of  the  usual  view  is  the  case  of  George 
Miiller,  who  prayed  for  gifts  for  his  orphan  asylum; 
and  his  prayers  seemed  to  him  to  be  answered,  for  in- 
variably the  gifts  came,  though  sometimes  '*the  Lord 
tarried  long.''  ^  But  in  our  chapter  on  the  relation 
between  the  inner  and  the  outer,  we  saw  how  little  we 
really  know  about  psycho-physical  causation  and  the 
real  relation  between  the  material  and  the  spiritual. 
They  appear  to  belong  to  two  different  orders  of  being ; 
and  we  were  not  able  to  see  how  they  could  be  unified  by 
the  categories  of  cause  and  effect. 

For  we  have :  — 

First  —  A  series  of  will  attitudes,  which  is  a  progression 
of  terms,  a  discreet  and  irreversible  series,  and 

Second  —  The  natural  order  which  is  cyclic  and  con- 
tinuous, which  can  therefore  be  treated  as  quantitative. 

But  if  in  the  first  series  something  new  and  significant 
appears  (through  prayer  as  by  miracle),  how  can  we  have 
the  recurrent  sequence  of  a  mechanical  science?    Psy- 


1  ''To-day  I  gave  myself  once  more  earnestly  to  prayer  respecting 
the  remainder  of  the  thousand  pounds.  This  evening  five  pounds 
were  given,  so  that  now  the  whole  sum  is  made  up.  During  eighteen 
months  and  ten  days  this  petition  has  been  brought  before  God  almost 
daUy."  "  Life  of  George  Miiller." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE ITS   FORMS  301 

chophysical  parallelism,  after  all,  even  if  it  could  be 
perfectly  carried  out,  does  not  really  synthesize  the  ele- 
ments of  each  series,  they  are  still  apart. ^ 

The  failure  of  the  theory  of  psychophysical  causation 
to  interpret  satisfactorily  the  efficacy  of  prayer  has  led 
recently  to  another  theory,  namely,  the  theory  of  the 
subliminal  consciousness,  or  the  ^^reser^^e  energy'^  theory. 
This  is  exemplified  in  the  present-day  tendency  to  identify 
the  divine  with  the  transmarginal  region  of  our  conscious- 
ness. Religious  experience  believes  that,  whether  or  not 
particular  events  are  changed  as  George  Miiller  held, 
at  least  subjective  relations  are  altered,  and  through 
them  outer  events  become  changed  to  the  subject  himself. 
As  actual  religious  experience  abundantly  testifies,  when 
we  get  into  touch  with  the  divine  through  prayer,  man 
views  his  life  in  another  way.  Our  lives  are  transformed 
—  suffused,  as  it  were,  with  the  golden  glow  of  the 
heavenly  life.  Through  prayer  new  meaning  comes  into 
our  life;  sorrows  are  bravely  borne;  difficult  tasks  are 
undertaken  ;  burdens  are  dropped  or  lightened ;  anxieties 
and  fears  banished;  serenity  of  mind  attained  —  it  is  "a 
new  life,^'  surely.  Thus  there  is  a  tendency  in  our 
day  to  make  of  the  response  to  prayer  the  quickening 
of  our  own  psychophysical  processes.  Prayer  is  a  form 
of  auto-suggestion.  James  says  in  effect,  that  in  prayer 
the  mind  draws  near  to  the  source  of  its  being,  and 
by  prayer  energy  is  set  free  and  operates  in  the  phe- 
nomena world.  Christian  Scientists  claim  that  through 
prayer  diseased  minds  and  bodies  are  healed.  These 
healers  are  often  successful;  and  also  it  is  true  that 
apparent  miracles  occur  at  the  shrine  of  St.  Anne  de 
Beaupre,  at  the  healing  waters  of  Lourdes,  and  elsewhere.^ 
Yet  the  doubting  modern  mind  asks :   do  these  methods 

^Suggestion  of  Charles  Pierce  C'The  Monist") :  "The  laws  of 
nature  may  be  nature's  habits,  only  relatively  invariable.**  Here, 
however,  we  are  largelj^  in  the  field  of  speculation. 

2  See  also  answers  to  prayers  in  Evangelical  sects. 


302  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

really  differ  from  those  used  by  psychotherapeutics, 
methods  of  suggestion,  of  hypnotism,  of  education,  en- 
couragement, rest-cure,  work-cure,  and  the  rest?  And 
cannot  these  '^  cures,"  as  well  as  the  phenomena  of  stig- 
mata, hallucinations,  of  visions  and  voices,  mind-reading, 
crystal  vision,  automatic  writing,  etc.,  be  explained  as 
science  would  explain  them  —  through  the  mediation  of 
physical  processes?  Have  we  any  right  to  say  that 
spiritual  power  set  free  by  prayer  brings  such  things  to 
pass  ?  And  further,  if  we  say  that  such  things  come  from 
the  transmarginal  region  of  our  consciousness,  and  that 
there  is  '' always  some  power  of  organic  expression  in 
abeyance  or  reserve,"  have  we  any  reason  to  identify 
this  transmarginal  region,  this  subliminal  self,  with  the 
divine?  '^In  the  study  of  conversion,  of  mystical  ex- 
periences and  of  prayer,"  says  James,  ^ invasions  from 
this  region  play  a  striking  part;  but  from  it  come 
also  imperfect  memories,  silly  jingles,  inhibitions,  timid- 
ities, '  dissolutive  ^  phenomena  of  various  sorts."  ^  There 
must  be  in  these  suggestions  from  the  subliminal  con- 
sciousness some  means  of  distinguishing  what  belongs 
to  the  divine  from  what  belongs  to  the  devil.  An  in- 
teresting case  of  neurasthenic  type  is  that  of  John  Bunyan. 
Here  the  suggestions  came  largely  from  the  side  of  the 
tempter.  In  prayer  time  Bunyan  is  overwhelmed  with 
temptations  to  pour  forth  '^floods  of  blasphemies,"  to 
doubt  the  truth  of  the  Scriptures,  to  '^commit  the  un- 
pardonable sin,"  to  sell  Christ,  etc.  The  subliminal 
consciousness  is  held  to  be  ''more"  than  the  self-con- 
scious personality.  If  by  this  more  a  social  consciousness 
is  meant,  social  suggestion  is  not  always  for  good,  for 
example,  as  seen  in  mob  action  and  also  in  some  of  the 
effects  of  religious  revivals.  In  the  olden  days  savages 
held  that  the  unseen  world  was  peopled  by  evil  spirits  — 

^For  cases  of  the  subconscious  self  as  abnormal  see  "Story  of 
Miss  Beauchamp,"  Dr.  Morton  Prince ;  also  articles  by  Janet,  Prince, 
and  others  in  Journal  of  Abnormal  Psychology. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  303 

demons  and  witches  —  weaving  magic  spells ;  so  one  of 
the  Vedic  prayers  is  against  the  flying  arrow,  for  in  it  a 
spirit  dwells,  and  the  person  who  shoots  the  arrow  prac- 
tises magic  in  letting  loose  the  spirit  which  may  prove 
dangerous  by  taking  up  its  abode  in  some  visible  object, 
by  making  some  one  ill,  or  by  causing  some  other  harm. 

In  the  first  place  then,  as  we  have  seen  in  earlier  chap- 
ters, there  seems  no  reason  to  hold  that  the  subliminal 
self  is  necessarily  a  more  divine  self.  A  criterion  of  value, 
an  ethical  judgment^  is  necessary  to  determine  whether 
instincts  and  impulses,  suggestions  and  desires  coming 
from  this  region  are  really  higher  and  nobler,  more  god- 
like and  divine.  And,  in  the  second  place :  If  through 
some  functioning  of  the  subliminal  consciousness  miracles 
and  '  ^  cures  ^^  are  effected,  have  we  logically  the  right  to  say 
that  these  are  the  result  of,  the  answer  to,  prayer? 

The  process,  it  appears  to  me,  is  like  that  described  by 
Starbuck  ^  in  his  account  of  religious  conversion,  and  may 
be  wholly  expressed  in  psychophysical  terms. 

Through  suggestion  of  another,  auto-suggestion,  or 
through  various  influences  which  gradually  become  con- 
centrated, a  new  brain  centre  is  stimulated  and  gradually 
becomes  the  controlling  centre.  The  new  idea,  as  Star- 
buck  says  (p.  107),  becomes  a  disturbing  element  until 
equilibrium  is  again  restored.  This  happens  when  the 
stimulated  centre  becomes  the  organizing  centre.  Then 
we  say  conversion  takes  place,  the  person  leads  a  new 
life,  on  a  higher  plane.  The  following  is  one  of  Star- 
buck's  cases,  that  of  a  young  girl :  ^'  On  the  impulse  of  the 
moment  I  went  to  the  altar.  After  an  hour  of  pleading 
and  prayer,  I  felt  something  go  from  me,  which  seemed 
like  a  burden  lifted,  and  something  seemed  floating  nearer 
and  nearer  just  above  me.  Suddenly  I  felt  a  touch  as  of 
the  divine  one,  and  a  voice  said,  ^Thy  sins  are  forgiven 
thee ;  arise,  go  in  peace.''' 

Similarly,  in  the  cure  of  nervous  diseases,  whether  bf 

1  Starbuck's  "Psychology  of  Religion,"  pp.  107-117. 


304  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Christian  Science,  the  miracles  of  the  past,  of  quacks,  or 
of  modern  psychotherapeutics,  all  depends  on  strengthen- 
ing the  right  stimulus  either  through  concentrating  the 
mind  on  one  idea,  —  as  the  thought  of  wholeness,  for 
example,  —  until  it  gradually  fills  the  whole  mind ;  or 
through  the  inhibition  of  antagonistic  impulses;  or 
through  the  method  of  calming  the  mind  by  the  process 
of  letting  go,  giving  up,  and  resignation,  of  which  Star- 
buck  ^  has  so  much  to  say,  ix.  methods  which  give  a 
chance  for  a  readjustment  of  impulses.  The  nervous 
system  thus  set  in  motion,  and  new  energy  set  free  dis- 
charging itself  in  new  channels  till  the  old  channels  are 
blocked  and  their  currents  inhibited,  will  influence  the 
pathological  processes  till  the  cure  is  effected.  Another 
way  of  expressing  it  is  —  Old  habits  must  be  overcome 
by  setting  up  new  habits. 

When  physicians  and  ministers  of  the  present  day,  who 
have  become  interested  in  the  psychic  treatment  of  dis- 
ease, say  that  functional  maladies  may  be  cured  by  prayer, 
what  they  probably  mean  is  that  since  ^'religion  means 
the  most  searching,  inclusive,  and  profound  activity  pos- 
sible for  the  individual,  —  since  it  reaches  to  the  depths 
of  personality  and  frees  its  most  powerful  motives"  —  ^ 
it  must  make  a  difference  in  the  kind  of  life  a  man  leads. 
A  man  who  continuously  holds  an  ethical-religious  attitude 
will  hardly  be  able  to  be  gluttonous,  or  slothful,  or  avari- 
cious, perhaps  not  even  wrathful  and  proud.  The  seven 
deadly  sins  described  by  Dante  would  naturally  have 
their  psychophysical  accompaniments,  as  his  symbolism 

^  Starbuck,  op.  cit.,  ''Conscious  volition,  before  the  change  of  heart, 
is  the  wilful  assertion  that  life  shall  still  be  viewed  through  the  old  port- 
holes, rather  than  from  the  new  vantage-ground.  It  is  God  and  sinful 
man  striving  against  each  other.  It  is  at  the  point  of  self-surrender 
that  the  deadlock  is  broken.  The  act  of  yielding  is  giving  oneself 
over  to  the  new  life,  making  it  the  centre  of  a  new  personality." 

Similar  to  this  state  of  "yielding  to  grace"  are  cases  of  unconscious 
cerebration  such  as  trying  to  solve  a  problem,  or  to  remember  some- 
thing vainly  at  night  and  finding  it  clear  in  the  morning. 

2  Dr.  Richard  C.  Cabot. 


THE   WAT  OF  LIFE  —  ITS  FORMS  305 

of  these  and  of  their  punishment  shows.  Thus,  speaking 
loosely  and  unscientifically  we  may  say  that  religion 
(prayer)  cures  disease ;  but  is  it  not  a  mixing  of  things 
that  are  mechanical  and  things  that  are  spiritual? 
Science  transforms  the  real  world  of  will  attitudes  and 
values  into  a  world  of  psychic  elements  with  their  nec- 
essary physical  accompaniments  in  order  to  describe  and 
explain  psychic  life;  science  makes  use  of  mechanical 
categories.  These  conceptions  are  simply  mental  short- 
hand for  the  convenience  of  scientific  communication. 
To  this  world,  psychic  elements  —  sensations,  brain 
cells,  the  nervous  system  with  its  nervous  discharges  — 
belong. 

Prayer,  however,  belongs  to  another  series:  it  is 
ethical,  and  its  effect,  if  any,  must  be  ethical,  not  psycho- 
physical. The  Christian  Scientists,  though  wrong  in 
their  presuppositions,  seem  more  logical  in  their  conclu- 
sions ;  for  if  disease  is  sin,»  it  belongs  to  the  moral  world 
and  might  be  cured  by  aspiration  and  prayer.  We  must 
deal  with  facts  of  the  same  order,  and  not  confuse  the  two. 
Psychophysical  categories  and  elements  belong  to  one 
order,  moral  and  religious  attitudes  and  values  to  another. 

The  subliminal  consciousness  is  not  by  any  means 
always  an  abnormal  consciousness,  and  it  is  here  that 
James's  theory  comes  to  the  fore.^  The  concept  ^'sub- 
liminal self  sums  up  those  slowly  maturing,  stored-up 
experiences  of  the  life  of  the  individual  or  the  inherited 
tendencies  of  his  ancestors  and  of  his  race  which  burst  some 
day  into  the  conscious  life.  We  have  seen  how  the  "up- 
rushes'^  of  the  subliminal  consciousness,  together  with  its 
influence,  vary  from  the  trivialities  of  any  normal  con- 
sciousness, from  dangerous  suggestions  of  psychasthenic 
states  (Janet's  examples)^  and  so-called  demon  posses- 
sions, to  the  inspiration  of  genius,  the  divine  calls  of 
prophets,  the  answers  to  prayer. 

^  "The  subliminal"  I  take  it  is  a  type  of  social  consciousness. 
2  Pierre  Janet  in  the  "  Journal  of  Abnormal  Psychology." 

X 


306  THE    DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

So  far  in  our  analysis  of  the  subliminal  consciousness, 
one  point  at  least  is  clear.  It  is  this :  The  subliminal 
consciousness  is  a  highly  suggestible  self.  It  is  analogous 
to  the  crowd  consciousness  which  Le  Bon  describes.  It  is 
suggestible,  impulsive,  uncritical,  carried  away  by  one 
idea,  by  sentiments,  shows  lack  of  control  and  respon- 
sibility, is  ready  to  sacrifice  itself  to  some  emotionally 
appealing  cause.  A  study  of  the  subliminal  conscious- 
ness, then,  leads  us  to  this  preliminary  result.  If  we 
accept  such  an  empirical  view  as  that  of  James,  then  the 
proposition  ''God  answers  prayer"  reduces  to  the  prop- 
position  ''the  subconscious  is  suggestible."  The  value 
of  prayer  will  then  depend  upon  the  propositions  — 
(o)  The  sub-conscious  self,  the  suggestible  consciousness, 
is  a  better  or  higher  type  of  self  than  the  conscious ;  and 
(6)  The  value  of  its  influence  will  depend  on  the  value 
of  the  suggestion  given,  and  on  the  supposition  that  this 
value  can  be  determined^  —  since  there  are  all  kinds  of 
suggestions,  good  and  bad.  Our  consideration,  then,  of 
the  subliminal  theory  has  led  us  so  far.  It  has  been  sug- 
gested the  efficacy  of  prayer  resides  in  auto-suggestion 
or  in  social  suggestion,  direct  or  indirect.^  But  what 
consideration  really  emerges?  It  is  evident  that  sug- 
gestion is  not  ultimate. 

Suggestions  imply,  do  they  not,  some  ideal  or  purpose 
beyond  themselves?  Our  final  conclusion  is,  then,  that 
ultimately  ideals  are  the  inspirers  of  conduct,  the  releasers 
of  activity.  Now  ideals  stand  for  a  vision  of  good  either 
individual  or  social,  and  these  seek  some  form  of  outward 
expression  or  embodiment  in  order  not  to  perish. 

If  we  turn  to  the  history  of  religious  experience,  the 
religious  ideal  appears  in  the  two  forms  already  men- 
tioned ;  that  is,  as  an  aesthetic  ideal,  and  as  an  ethical 
ideal.     The  individual  type  of  religious  experience  seeks 

^  The  method  of  suggestion  is  well  known  in  the  practice  of  psy- 
chotherapeutics, and  no  doubt  was  used  in  the  miracle  cures  in  which 
history  abounds. 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE ITS   FORMS  307 

the  beatific  vision  and  the  strength  and  wisdom  born  of 
communion.  The  individual  type  of  the  answer  to  prayer 
is  a  sense  of  inspiration,  enhghtenment,  of  joy  and  peace 
which  means  a  change  in  inner  experience,  —  a  new  birth. 
It  means  that  the  individual  finds  his  united,  whole  or  pur- 
poseful selfhood.  Emotionally  it  is  the  rapture  of  direct 
revelation  and  communion  (as  it  seems  to  him),  with 
God  as  an  holy  ideal,  or  holy  cause  to  which  he  burns  to 
devote  his  new  strength  in  contemplation,  in  service  or 
sacrifice.  This,  too,  is  in  large  measure  an  emotional 
experience.  It  may  have  such  outward  forms  of  expres- 
sion as  sensory,  auditory,  or  motor  automatism,  of  which 
religious  history  has  so  much  to  tell;  for  if  one  kind  of 
activity  is  inhibited,  some  other  outlet  will  be  found ;  even 
the  life  of  the  monastery,  as  we  know,  has  its  regular  ex- 
ternal forms,  its  times  and  seasons. 

The  social  religious  experience  turns  to  practice.  The 
social  response  comes  when  some  appeal  in  the  heart  of 
an  individual  or  group  of  persons,  —  as  in  the  prayers 
of  a  church,  —  comes  into  touch  with  the  deep  heart  of 
humanity.  The  result  will  then  be  some  change  in  the 
outward  social  world,  as  some  new  institution,  reform  or 
other  form  of  social  activity. 

Prayer,  then,  is  an  individual  experience,  but  it  is 
really  social,  too,  and  in  so  far  as  the  subliminal  conscious- 
ness takes  part  in  this  experience,  in  saying  that  the  sub- 
liminal self  is  suggestible,  we  have  really  said  at  the 
same  time  that  it  is  a  social  self.  For  if  suggestible,  it 
may  be  socially  disciplined  and  educated.  Let  any  one, 
for  instance,  in  an  experience  of  sorrow  try  the  simple 
experiment  of  repeating  to  himself  pessimistic  verses  such 
as  those  which  dwell  on  the  passing  of  life,  its  futility 
and  tragedy,  or  let  him,  on  the  other  hand,  repeat  to 
himself  as  a  discipline  to  strength  and  consolation  those 
hymns,  prayers,  and  poems  which  express  the  experience 
of  triumph,  of  peace  or  of  enlightenment  of  the  saints, 
martyrs,  heroes,  throughout  the  ages,  and  let  him  note 


308  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

the  instinctive,  inevitable  difference  in  his  own  attitude 
thereafter  which  one  experiment  or  the  other  tends  to 
make. 

Such  appears  to  be  the  testimony  of  religious  experi- 
ence in  regard  to  the  response  to  prayer.  But  still 
we  have  to  ask  —  Is  this  experience,  are  these  ideals 
valuable?  Is  the  prayer  really  efficacious  in  the 
world  ?  —  is  the  response  in  very  truth  the  presence  of 
God  in  the  soul  of  the  individual  and  the  social  com- 
munity? 

Since  the  suggestible,  social  consciousness  can  be  dis- 
ciplined, as  we  have  seen,  again  the  value  of  its  revela- 
tions will  depend  on  the  kind  of  education  it  receives. 
Not  all  social  suggestions  and  not  all  auto-suggestions 
are  valuable.  So  we  come  back  to  the  question  what  is 
good?  What  is  an  ultimate  value?  What  do  we  really 
mean  by  an  absolute  or  religious  ideal  ?  It  is  in  the  light 
of  this  consideration  that  we  cannot,  in  the  last  analysis, 
hold  as  was  suggested  above  that  the  final  efficacy  of 
prayer  resides  in  suggestion,  either  auto-suggestion  or 
social  suggestion. 

The  theory  that  God  is  a  reservoir  of  power  which  the 
prayer  might  turn  into  the  channels  of  man's  capricious 
will,  is  not  a  spiritual  theory  of  prayer.  Prayer  belongs 
to  the  moral  order,  to  the  world  of  will  attitudes,  meanings, 
and  purposes,  but  is  it  not  true  that  here  prayer  has 
efiicacy  and  is  dynamic  ?  The  records  of  the  lives  of  the 
saints  answer  in  the  affirmative.  Yet  still  one  may  ask  : 
Granted  that  prayer  belongs  to  the  world  of  ethical  values, 
what  does  prayer  actually  do  ?  What  is  the  nature  of  the 
response?  What,  then,  for  a  final  interpretation,  is  the 
essence  of  the  prayer  experience  ?  Let  us  turn  once  more 
to  the  '^concrete  situation,''  and  from  an  analysis  of  the 
concrete  and  particular  experience  attempt  to  discover 
afresh  the  essence  and  the  efficacy  of  prayer. 

No  doubt  religious  experience  is  often  a  joyous  out- 
pouring of  the  heart  scarcely  conscious  of  present  needs 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE ITS   FORMS  309 

or  of  past  woes;  and  there  are  prayers  of  adoration, 
thanksgiving,  and  the  like,  —  though  we  usually  call  such 
prayers  hymns,  —  and,  surely,  divine  revelations  come 
through  the  experience  of  joy  as  well  as  of  grief  and  pain, 
and  yet,  probably  we  can  more  easily  find  the  essence  of 
prayer  experience  in  times  of  stress,  of  sorrow,  of  perplex- 
ity, or  of  sin.  ''Out  of  the  depths  have  I  cried  unto 
Thee.''  This  seems  to  be  the  typical  prayer  experience. 
What,  then,  does  this  cry  mean?  Let  us  analyze  two 
typical  prayer  experiences,  one  the  case  of  sorrow,  the 
other  the  case  of  sin. 

1.  First  let  us  take  one  of  the  most  common  of  human 
experiences,  —  the  crisis  which  comes  in  the  life  of  man  or 
woman  when  one  dear  to  him  or  her  —  parent,  child,  or 
friend  —  has  been  suddenly  snatched  away  by  death,  or 
it  may  be  removed  by  estrangement  or  misunderstanding. 
Such  an  experience  as  that  which  Leigh  Himt  describes  in 
''Rose  Alymer,"  which  we  quoted  above,  or  an  experience 
like  that  of  Milton's  " Lycidas,"  of  Tennyson's  "In  Memo- 
riam,"  of  Arnold's  "Thyrsis,"  of  Emerson's  "Threnody," 
of  Browning's  "Too  Late,"  or  Wordsworth's  lines  to 
Lucy :  — 

"She  lived  unknown  and  few  could  know, 

When  Lucy  ceased  to  be ; 

But  she  is  in  her  grave,  and  oh, 

The  difference  to  me !" 

As  in  these  poems,  the  individual's  life  was  bound  up  with 
the  life  of  this  beloved  person  and  now  it  is  desolate ;  the 
whole  life  is  changed,  its  crown  and  meaning  gone.  The 
soul  feels  itself  to  be  in  an  irrational  world.  It  beats  its 
wings  against  the  iron  bars  of  fate  and  the  irrevocable, 
vainly  striving  to  turn  back  the  cruel  march  of  time  and 
to  make  what  has  happened  as  if  it  were  not. 

Or,  in  striving  to  overcome  its  sorrow,  stoically  through 
the  effort  of  its  own  imconquerable  will,  the  soul  of  man 
learns  its  powerlessness  to  fight  against  the  world.  Thus 
struggling,  the  awful  sense  of  the  irrevocable  comes  near  to 


310  THE    DKAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

overwhelming  the  soul.  Then  comes  the  turning  to  prayer 
in  the  cry/  My  God !  or  as  in  the  Psalmist's,  ^'My  God,  my 
God,  why  hast  thou  forsaken  me ! ' '  And  herewith,  I  take  it, 
we  have  the  beginning  of  the  prayer-experience.  For  this 
cry  is  first  of  all  an  appeal  to  the  spirit  of  the  universe,  to 
the  omnipotent  All  Knower  to  justify  his  ways  to  man, 
and  at  the  same  time  it  is  the  beginning  of  wisdom.  Until 
this  moment  he  who  prays  has  been,  in  James's  language, 
'^a  divided  soul."  But  in  his  recognition  that  this  ex- 
perience of  his  is  in  the  order  of  the  universe,  and  that  the 
past  is  irrevocable,  man  finds  himself  in  touch  with  'Hhat 
which  is"  —  'Hhe  real."  So  in  his  acceptance  of  the  in- 
evitable fact  is  the  beginning  of  the  response  to  prayer. 
For  in  his  acceptance  of  the  irrevocable  order  of  the  uni- 
verse, he  sees  the  futility  of  his  own  desperate  strivings, 
so  he  begins  to  recover  and  his  wounds  begin  to  heal. 
For,  facing  the  experience  as  an  inevitable  element  in  the 
real  world,  he  yields  himself  to  the  order  of  the  world 
and  he  begins  to  find  the  new  way  of  adjustment.  This 
is  the  second  step  to  enlightenment  and  to  the  attainment 
of  self-mastery  and  serenity  of  spirit.  This  acceptance  is  in 
part  an  act  of  faith.  He  cannot  at  first  see  why  the  ex- 
perience is  good  for  him ;  what  he  sees  is  that  it  is  inevi- 
table, —  an  element  in  the  universal  order,  an  order  of 
which  he  is  a  part,  upon  which  he  is  dependent,  and  which 
he  has  to  accept. 

Let  us  see  how  Pusey  has  described  the  attitude  of 
renunciation  and  consent  to  the  Divine  decree :  — 

"  God  knows  us  through  and  through.  Not  the  most  secret  thought, 
which  we  most  hide  from  ourselves,  is  hidden  from  Him.  As  then  we 
come  to  know  ourselves  through  and  through,  we  come  to  see  ourselves 
more  as  God  sees  us,  and  then  we  catch  some  little  glimpse  of  His 
designs  with  us,  how  each  ordering  of  His  Providence,  each  check  to 
our  desires,  each  failure  of  our  hopes,  is  just  fitted  for  us,  and  for 
something  in  our  own  spiritual  state,   which  others  know  not  of, 

*  The  simplest  form  of  prayer  seems  to  be  just  a  cry  to  God : 
**  Hear  my  cry,  0  God ; 
Attend  unto  my  prayer."  (Psalm  61 :  1.) 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  311 

and  which,  till  then,  we  know  not.  Until  we  come  to  this  knowl- 
edge, we  must  take  all  in  faith,  believing,  though  we  know  now, 
the  goodness  of  God  towards  us.  As  we  know  ourselves,  we,  thus 
far,  know  God.'^ 

And  Vaughan  in  the  following  hymn  :  — 

"Lord,  with  what  courage  and  delight 

I  do  each  thing, 
When  Thy  least  breath  sustains  my  wing  I 

I  shine  and  move 

Like  those  above. 

And,  with  much  gladness 

Quitting  sadness. 
Make  me  fair  days  of  every  night." 

"How  shall  we  rest  in  God?  By  giving  ourselves 
wholly  to  him.  If  you  give  yourself  by  halves,  you  cannot 
find  full  rest.  There  will  ever  be  a  lurking  disquiet  in  that 
half  which  is  withheld.  Martyrs,  confessors,  and  saints 
have  tasted  this  rest  and  'counted  themselves  happy  in 
that  they  endured.'  A  countless  host  of  God's  faithful 
servants  have  drunk  deeply  of  it  under  the  daily  burden 
of  a  weary  life  —  dull,  commonplace,  painful  or  desolate. 
All  that  God  has  been  to  them,  he  is  ready  to  be  to  you. 
The  heart  once  fairly  given  to  God  with  a  clear  conscience, 
a  fitting  rule  of  life,  and  a  steadfast  purpose  of  obedience, 
you  will  find  a  wonderful  rest  coming  over  you."  ^ 

There  is  a  state  of  inner  (heavenly)  beatitude  following 
acquiescence,  which  is  the  beginning  of  the  creation  of 
new  values  and  is  the  mystical  answer  to  prayer. 

It  is  when  the  heart  of  man  feels  that  something  is 
wrong  with  the  world-order,  when  it  feels  that  what  is  now 
the  inevitable  might  well  have  been  otherwise,  that  it 
cannot  be  at  peace.  Or,  again,  when  it  seems  that  the 
world  is  irrational  and  meaningless,  as  the  hypothesis  of 
scientific  materialism  makes  it  seem  to  many  minds,  then 
struggle,  doubt,  conflict,  suffering  follow  till  at  last  the 
sorrow-laden  heart  turns  to  God  in  prayer. 

For  in  the  prayer-experience,  man  seeks  to  get  into 
1  Jean  Nicolas  Grou. 


312  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

communion  with  the  soul  of  reaHty,  with  the  whole  and 
inmost  nature  of  things,  and  the  first  step  to  this,  as  we 
have  seen,  is  the  acceptance  of  the  inevitable. 

**When  your  sorrow  seems  intolerable  to  you,  pray  —  pray  and 
the  devils  become  changed  to  shining  angels." 

My  sorrow  is  inevitable.  I  must  bear  it,  but  how? 
When  the  stricken  heart  of  man  asks  this  question,  it  has 
begun  to  learn  wisdom.  In  its  loss  and  sorrow  it  prays 
for  help,  for  strength,  for  enlightenment.  The  mystic  is 
right  when  he  says  he  has  seen  God,  or  been  with  God. 
For  in  the  response  to  prayer,  man  wins  new  insight  into 
the  essential,  that  is,  the  divine^  meaning  of  things,  and  he 
goes  forth  with  new  strength  to  meet  the  adventure  of 
hfe ;  like  a  knight  of  the  olden  days  to  fight  the  evils  of 
life  and  to  serve  life's  needs.  Then  the  sorrow  which 
cannot  die  becomes  a  transfigured  sorrow,  a  holy  memory, 
an  inspiration,  a  blessed  peace-bringer.  The  beloved 
from  whom  he  is  separated  will  become  to  him  an  abiding 
presence,  his  guide,  inspirer,  and  comforter ;  and  now  he 
begins  to  see  life  as  an  whole,  and  the  place  in  the  whole 
of  his  own  tragic  experience.  He  begins  to  make  a  friend 
of  his  sorrow. 

We  have  spoken  of  separation  and  death,  but  pari  passu 
the  application  can  be  made  to  the  sense  of  guilt  and  re- 
morse, to  sickness,  limitation,  disappointment,  or  any  of 
the  other  countless  adversities  which  may  overtake  the 
human  spirit  on  its  pilgrimage. 

The  third  step  in  insight  (and  response)  is  this :  Since 
this  tragic  experience  is  an  element  or  part  of  the  total 
world  experience  and  order,  it  is  a  universal  element  and 
the  world  is  very  tragic.  Like  the  great  heave  of  the 
tides  of  the  ocean  and  its  deep  moaning  undertone  before 
the  coming  of  the  east  wind,  when  perchance  there  is  a 
storm  far  out  at  sea,  so  in  all  human  experience  there 
appears  to  be  an  undertone  of  sorrow  and  tragedy.^ 

^  We  shall  consider  this  point  further  in  the  next  section. 


THE   WAY   OF  LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  313 

Nevertheless,  such  sorrows  it  now  appears  have,  if  we  will 
take  them  so,  a  transforming,  a  redeeming  power.  It  is 
common  experience,  all  his  brethren  suffer,  but  also  they 
may  be  saved.  So  he,  the  individual,  enlightened  by 
prayer,  goes  forth  to  bring  the  good  word  to  man.  Strong, 
calm,  and  serene  he  goes  because  the  universe  has  told  him 
its  secret,  because  he  has  been  in  the  presence  of  God. 
Such  an  experience  or  vision  brings  peace  and  may  become 
ecstatic  even  as  the  Mystics  say.  It  is  like  the  experience 
of  Jacob  when,  alone  in  the  desert  at  night,  he  wrestled 
with  one  unknown  and  he  said :  ^^Let  me  go  for  the  day 
breaketh'^  and  Jacob  said  :  ^'I  will  not  let  thee  go  except 
thou  bless  me.  '^  And  Jacob  called  the  name  of  the  place 
Peniel :  for  he  said  ^^I  have  seen  God  face  to  face.''  The 
blessing  was  the  peace  and  joy  wliich  come  through  self- 
mastery  over  the  private  will ;  or,  we  may  express  it  more 
religiously,  —  as  conversion,  the  self-surrender  to  the 
Ideal,  —  the  '^life  hid  in  Christ  with  God"  as  Paul  called 
it. 

We  have  such  hours  of  insight  —  mystic  they  have  been 
called  because  they  seem  supernaturally  enlightening  — 
yet  in  fact  no  miracle  is  needed  to  explain  them. 
Through  repeated  reactions  to  a  situation,  we  have  ac- 
quired the  habit  of  memory ;  that  is,  of  summarizing  the 
past  in  our  fleeting  momentary  experience  so  that  at  times 
the  passing  moment  reveals  to  us  a  great  deal  more  than 
its  own  immediacy.  It  becomes  a  symbol  or  an  epitome, 
as  it  were,  of  a  rich  experience.  Our  life  is  lived  in  the 
midst  of  symbols  of  this  kind  —  symbols  such  as  the 
^ '  Cross ' '  and  the  ' '  Flag ' '  exemplify.  General  ideas  are  of 
this  nature,  but  the  same  thing  is  true  of  sense  perception. 
WTien  on  the  sea  beach  I  scent  the  salt  smell  of  the  brine, 
and  listen  to  the  roar  of  the  waves,  the  experience  which 
comes  to  me  ranges,  it  may  be,  all  the  way  from  other 
days  of  my  own  life  to  the  experience  of  ships  at  sea 
and  all  the  adventure  and  tragedy  of  sea  life ;  the  voy- 
ages to  discover  treasure  islands,  unknown  continents  or 


314  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

poles,  pirate  cruises,  sea  fights,  perils  of  storms,  wrecks, 
disaster. 

Or,  again,  the  picture  I  saw  one  day  from  a  country- 
roadside,  —  the  look  of  pain  in  the  deep  eyes  of  a  woman 
passing  through  the  orchard  of  a  New  England  farm  — 
brings  to  my  mind  all  the  love  and  sorrow  of  all  the  women 
in  the  world  who  have  suffered.  Or  to  some  one  a  certain 
flower  which  blooms  in  the  early  spring  is  so  enwrought 
with  intense  inner  experience  that  the  drops  from  its  leaves 
are  like  drops  of  blood  from  the  heart. ^ 

This  type  of  experience  is  described  again  in  the  often 
quoted  lines  of  Wordsworth's  ^'Highland  Reaper."  He 
could  not  hear  the  words  of  the  song  but  the  wild,  plaintive 
tones  of  the  voice  brought  to  the  poet  the  sense  of 

"Old,  unhappy,  far-off  things 
And  battles  long  ago." 

or  it  might  be 

"...  some  more  humble  lay 


Some  natural  sorrow,  loss  or  pain 
That  has  been,  and  will  be  again.' 


This  is  the  prayer  experience  on  the  '^hither  side." 
Man  is  in  communion  with  ^Hhat  which  is,"  or,  in  spe- 
cifically religious  language,  God  answers  prayer.  How 
the  experience  should  be  described  on  the  ''beyond"  side 
of  experience,  or  metaphysically,  that  is  not  for  us  here 
to  determine. 

The  study  of  typical  prayers  shows,  I  think,  that  this  is 
the  essence  of  the  prayer  experience  and  in  the  fight  of 
our  analysis  we  may  turn  back  to  examine  anew  our  con- 
crete illustrations.  The  prayers  of  the ' '  Imitation ' '  may  be 
taken  as  classical  expressions  of  prayer  for  help  in  tribula- 
tion.    Here  is  one  from  a  recent  collection  of  hymns :  ^  — 

"I  sought  the  Lord,  and  afterward  I  knew 

He  moved  my  soul  to  seek  Him,  seeking  me ; 

1  Robert  Browning,  "May  and  Death." 

2  Hymns  of  the  Kingdom,  1904. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE 


ITS   FORMS 


315 


It  was  not  I  that  found,  O  Saviour  true, 
No,  I  was  found  of  Thee. 

**Thou  didst  reach  forth  Thy  hand  and  mine  enfold; 
I  walked  and  sank  not  on  the  storm-vexed  sea,  — 
'Twas  not  so  much  that  I  on  Thee  took  hold. 
As  Thou,  dear  Lord,  on  me. 

"I  find,  I  walk,  I  love,  but  0  the  whole 

Of  love  is  but  my  answer.  Lord,  to  Thee ; 
For  Thou  wert  long  beforehand  with  my  soul, 
Always  Thou  lovedst  me." 

The  following  prayer  of  John  Woolman  suggests  the 
relation  of  the  prayer  state  to  the  experience  of  sorrow  or 
misery. 

"O  Lord,  my  God !  the  arraying  horrors  of  darkness  were  gathered 
round  me,  and  covered  me  all  over,  and  I  saw  no  way  to  go  forth ;  I 
felt  the  depth  and  extent  of  the  misery  of  my  fellow  creatures  separated 
from  the  Divine  harmony  and  it  was  heavier  than  I  could  bear,  and 
I  was  crushed  under  it.  I  lifted  up  my  hand,  I  stretched  out  my  arm 
but  there  was  none  to  help  me.  In  the  depth  of  misery,  O  Lord,  I 
remembered  that  thou  art  omnipotent  and  that  I  had  called  thee 
Father,  and  I  felt  that  I  loved  Thee  and  I  was  made  quiet  in  my  will 
and  I  waited  for  deliverance  from  Thee.  Thou  hadst  pity  upon 
me,  when  no  man  could  help  me ;  I  saw  that  meekness  under  suffer- 
ing was  showed  to  us  in  the  most  affecting  example  of  Thy  Son  — 
Thou  taughtest  me  to  follow  him  and  I  said,  'Thy  will,  O  Father,  be 
done.'"i 

Or,  take  this  from  Tauler :  — 

"God  takes  a  thousand  times  more  pains  with  us  than  the  artist 
with  his  picture  by  many  touches  of  sorrow,  and  by  many  colors  of 
circumstance,  to  bring  man  into  the  form  which  is  the  highest  and 
noblest  in  his  sight,  if  only  we  receive  his  gifts  in  the  right  spirit.  But 
when  the  cup  is  put  away,  and  these  feelings  are  shifted  or  unheeded,  a 
greater  injury  is  done  to  the  soul  than  can  ever  be  amended.  For  no 
heart  can  conceive  in  what  surpassing  love  God  giveth  us  this  m5rrrh ; 
yet  this  which  we  ought  to  receive  to  our  soul's  good  we  suffer  to  pass 
by  us  in  sleepy  indifference  and  nothing  comes  of  it.  Then  we  come 
and  complain :  'Alas,  Lord !  I  am  so  dry  and  it  is  so  dark  within  me ! ' 
I  tell  thee,  dear  child,  open  thy  heart  to  the  pain  and  it  will  do  thee 
more  good  than  if  thou  wert  full  of  feeling  and  devoutness." 

1  John  Woolman. 


316  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

To  give  here  a  less  technical  illustration,  consider  the 
following  poem  of  Matthew  Arnold :  — 

"Calm  soul  of  all  things  make  it  mine 
To  feel  amidst  the  city's  jar 
That  there  abides  a  peace  of  Thine 
Man  did  not  make  and  cannot  mar. 

"The  will  to  neither  strive  nor  cry 
The  power  to  feel  with  others  give 
Calm,  calm  me  more,  nor  let  me  die 
Before  I  have  begmi  to  live." 

The  spiritual  bond  which  binds  man  to  the  '* Holiest" 
is  only  too  easily  broken.  The  redeeming  spirit  which 
comes  through  prayer  cannot  abide  with  us  except  by 
constant  renewal  at  the  source  of  strength  and  peace,  that 
is,  by  prayer.  Hence,  even  in  individual  experience,  the 
need  of  repeated  or  cyclic  processes ;  and  the  method  of 
approach  to  prayer  is  largely  that  of  the  Via  Negativa 
which  all  the  Mystics  emphasize.  It  requires  the  shutting 
out  of  all  that  is  irrelevant,  of  all  worldly  interests  and 
cares,  in  order  to  concentrate  the  mind  on  the  things  of  the 
spirit,  on  such  deep  questionings  as  these:  What  does 
life  really  mean,  and  what  part  ought  man  to  play  in  it  ? 

Buddhism  names  this  process  of  discipline  and  en- 
lightenment through  meditation,  trances,  and  prayer,  the 
'^  extinction  of  desire."  We  may  use  this  expression  if  we 
mean  by  it  the  overcoming  of  the  partial  point  of  view  for 
the  sake  of  the  whole,  i,e.  I  cannot  strive  or  pray  for  the 
fulfilment  of  the  partial  end  no  matter  how  much  longed 
for  in  itself  if  it  contradicts  the  meaning  and  purpose  of 
my  unified  life,  i.e.  my  life  in  relation  to  the  whole.  But 
** extinction"  implies  the  turning  away  from,  rejecting 
and  forgetting  precious  memories  and  experiences.  Better, 
therefore,  than  extinction  is  the  expression  the  sublima- 
tion or  idealization  of  the  particular  end  through  taking 
it  up  as  an  element  in  the  whole.  Others,  again,  like  the 
Stoics,  have  called  this  experience  "resignation,"  but  rather 
is  it,  I  think,  a  process  of  self-surrender  upon  enlighten- 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE ITS   FORMS  317 

ment,  loyalty,  and  endeavor,  —  that  is,  a  determination  of 
the  will,  —  following  a  vision  of  the  whole  or  united  life, 
of  the  ideal  good.^ 

The  mystic  state  is  ineffable,  noetic,  passive  in  self- 
surrender,  and,  without  renewal,  the  state  is  transient.^ 
It  is  ineffable  because  of  the  intensity  in  concentration  of 
the  emotional  life.  The  noetic  or  illuminative  character 
is  due,  I  think,  to  the  fact  that  while  the  analytic,  effort- 
ful reason  is  at  rest,  the  synthetic  reason  acts  easily  and 
harmoniously  (the  state  of  mind  on  first  awakening  from 
sleep  described  by  Tauler).  It  is  ^'a  moment  of  greater 
mental  integrity,"  as  it  has  been  called.  Such  an  experi- 
ence is  at  once  intercourse  with  our  deepest  selfhood  and 
conununion  with  God.  For  the  thought  of  what  our 
life  and  all  life  as  a  whole  signifies,  inevitably  brings  us 
calm,  and  strength,  and  courage  to  go  out  into  the  world 
with  renewed  consecration  of  spirit.  Such  a  state  of 
prayer  is  not,  however,  I  think,  so  much  a  return  to  the 
^'simple  and  primitive "  of  the  childlike  soul  as  it  is  the  com- 
pletest  development  of  a  self-consciously  dedicated  spirit 
which  strives  for  the  realization  of  an  entirely  holy  will. 

In  the  last  analysis,  we  have  seen  that  the  efficacy  of 
prayer  is  determined  by  that  profound  ethical  judgment  of 
what  ''is  best ''  and  by  the  choice  of  it  (or  the  yielding  to  it, 
if  we  like  to  call  it  so)  which  is  an  act  of  self-determination. 

For,  again,  for  the  discipline  of  prayer  to  avail  it  must 
always  be  followed  by  active,  ethical  endeavor  in  the 
outer  world. 

*'  Where  there  is  no  vision,  the  people  perish." 

Yes,  but  where  there  is  no  endeavor  to  be  loyal  to  the 
vision  by  carrying  it  out  in  a  task,  we  wake  to  find  the 
vision  itself  is  fled. 

1  Dante,  "Divine  Comedy,"  Paradiso,  Canto  XXVIII.  "Hence 
may  be  seen  how  beatitude  is  founded  on  the  act  which  sees,  not  on 
that  which  loves,  which  follows  after.  And  the  merit  to  which  grace 
and  good  will  give  birth  is  the  measure  of  this  seeing." 

2  William  James,  "Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,"  p.  380. 


318  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

2.  We  have  analyzed  the  prayer  experience  in  relation 
to  the  acceptance  of  sorrow ;  but  let  us  take,  more  briefly, 
another  common  experience,  namely,  the  case  of  sin. 
Very  many  prayers  are  prayers  for  strength  to  overcome 
temptation,  or  for  deliverance  from  sin,  as,  for  example, 
the  early  prayers  quoted  on  page  269.  The  prayers  of 
St.  Augustine  are  passionate  cries  for  help  in  the  storm  and 
stress  of  the  sinful  consciousness. 

"But  when  a  deep  consideration  had  from  the  secret  bottom  of  my 
soul  drawn  together  and  heaped  up  all  my  misery  in  the  sight  of  my 
heart;  there  arose  a  mighty  shower  of  tears.  Which  that  I  might 
pour  forth  wholly,  in  its  natural  expressions,  I  rose  from  Alypius: 
solitude  was  uggested  to  me  as  fitter  for  the  business  of  weeping ;  so 
I  retired  so  far  that  even  his  presence  could  not  be  a  burden  to  me- 
Thus  was  it  then  with  me,  and  he  perceived  something  of  it;  for 
something  I  suppose  I  had  spoken,  wherein  the  tones  of  my  voice 
appeared  choked  with  weeping,  and  so  had  risen  up.  He  then  re- 
mained where  we  were  sitting,  most  extremely  astonished.  I  cast 
myself  down  I  know  not  how,  under  a  certain  fig-tree,  giving  full  vent 
to  my  tears;  and  the  floods  of  mine  eyes  gushed  out  an  acceptable 
sacrifice  to  Thee.  And,  not  indeed  in  these  words,  yet  to  this  purpose, 
spake  I  much  unto  Thee:  and  Thou,  0  Lord,  how  long?  how  long. 
Lord,  wilt  Thou  be  angry,  for  ever?  Remember  not  our  former  iniquities, 
for  I  felt  that  I  was  held  by  them.  I  sent  up  these  sorrowful  words ; 
How  long?  how  long,  'to-morrow  and  to-morrow?'  Why  not  now? 
why  is  there  not  this  hour  an  end  to  my  uncleanness?"  * 

"O  God,  Thou  only  refuge  of  Thy  children  *  who  remainest  true 
though  all  else  should  fail,  and  livest  though  all  else  die,  cover  us  now 
when  we  fly  to  Thee,  rebuke  within  us  all  immoderate  desires,  all  un- 
quiet temper,  all  presumptuous  expectations,  all  ignoble  self-indul- 
gence, and  feeling  on  us  the  embrace  of  Thy  fatherly  hand,  may  we 
meekly  and  with  courage  go  into  the  darkest  ways  of  our  pilgrimage, 
anxious  not  to  change  Thy  perfect  will  but  only  to  do  and  bear  it 
bravely." 

As  in  sorrow,  so  in  sin  the  soul  is  divided  against  itself. 
We  saw  in  the  case  of  sorrow  that  the  great  difficulty  is 
that  man  is  not  able  to  accept  the  inevitable.  The  past 
which  is  over  for  ever  and  for  which  he  restlessly  longs, 

^  "Confessions  of  St.  Augustine,"  p.  1. 
'  James  Martineau. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS  FORMS  319 

seems  to  him  more  beautiful,  more  valuable  than  the 
present,  and  life  without  that  which  is  gone  seems  to  be- 
come irrational.  So  in  great  sorrow  we  lose  for  a  time  the 
sense  of  reality  in  life,  our  grief  is  numbing,  and  life  seems 
unbearable,  for  we  have  not  learnt  the  lesson  of  sorrow, 
we  have  not  come  to  see  the  new  meaning  in  life  which 
sorrow  brings. 

"Wer  nie  sein  Brod  mit  Thranen  ass. 
Wer  nie  die  Kummer-voUen  Nachte 
Auf  seinem  Bette  weinend  sass. 
Der  kennt  euch  nicht  ihr  himmlischen  Machte." 

In  our  analysis  we  found  that  the  grief-stricken  soul  has 
first  of  all  to  learn  acquiescence  in  the  inevitable,  and  so 
it  comes  at  last  to  find  God.  '^O,  if  you  knew,''  one  has 
said,  ''the  peace  that  comes  from  an  accepted  sorrow.'' 
After  our  acquiescence,  we  gain  strength  through  this  very 
act  to  turn  away  from  our  own  private  grief  to  meet  the 
burden,  needs,  and  sorrows  of  all  the  world.  In  sin,  the 
case  is  a  little  different,^  because  the  sinner  recognizes  the 
good,  yet  he  cannot  wholly  will  to  abandon  his  lower  self 
and  unite  himself  actually  to  the  good.  He  longs,  that  is, 
for  something  different  and  incompatible.  So,  as  St. 
Augustine  says  of  himself:  there  were  two  wills  in  him 
which  in  their  struggle  with  one  another  for  mastery  rent 
his  soul  asunder. 

"Therefore  was  I  at  strife  with  myself  and  rent  asunder  by  my- 
self" —  for  "this  rent  befell  me  of  my  will." 

Yet  the  united  self  which  sees  the  good  is  the  real  self. 

"Therefore  it  was  no  more  I  that  wrought  it,  but  sin  that  dwelt  in 
me." 

"What  said  I  not  against  myself?  with  what  scourges  of  con- 
demnation lashed  I  not  my  soul,  that  it  might  follow  me,  striving  to 
go  after  Thee !    Yet  it  drew  back;  refused,  but  excused  not  itself.  . 

1  Illustrations  of  the  consciousness  of  sin :  St.  Paul  in  Romans  7 ; 
"St.  Augustine's  Confessions,"  Book  8;  John  Bunyan's  "Autobiogra- 
phy"; Donatello  in  the  "Marble  Faun";  Arthur  Dimmesdale  in 
"  The  Scarlet  Letter  "  ;  Dostoieffsky  in  "  Crime  and  Punishment." 


320  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

All  arguments  were  spent  and  confuted ;  there  remained  a  mute  shrink- 
ing; and  she  feared,  as  she  would  death,  to  be  restrained  from  the 
flux  of  that  custom,  whereby  she  was  wasting  to  death." 

Then,  at  last,  after  his  utter  misery  and  despair  comes  the 
prayer  for  deliverance.  The  prayer  is  to  be  freed  from  the 
bondage  to  the  lower  self,  to  be  at  peace,  whole,  united, 
self-possessed.^  The  following  words  of  St.  Augustine 
can,  therefore,  be  applied  both  to  the  state  of  sin  and  to  the 
state  of  grief :  — 

"Woe  to  the  audacious  soul  which  hopes  by  forsaking  Thee  to  gain 
some  other  thing." 

Deliverance  from  the  lower,  disrupted,  wilful,  selfish 
self  into  the  peace  of  self-possession  and  union  with  the 
will  of  God  is  in  sin  as  in  sorrow  the  answer  to  prayer. 

So  much  of  man's  wrong  doing  is  in  part  ignorance, 
for  there  is  no  sin  unless  the  ideal  is  to  some  extent  rec- 
ognized. Sin  is  conscious  rejection  of  the  seen  ideal.^ 
Yet  the  ideal  is  never  wholly  known  and  the  sinner  is 
rarely  conscious  of  the  whole  extent  of  his  turpitude. 
From  man's  sin,  as  from  his  sorrow,  he  may  learn  the 
great  lessons  of  life.  But  that  it  is  necessary  for  him, 
sometimes,  to  descend  into  hell,  we  learn  from  Beatrice's 
speech  to  Dante :  "Nor  did  it  avail  me  to  obtain  inspira- 
tions with  which,  both  in  dream  and  otherwise,  I  called 
him  back ;  so  little  did  he  heed  them.  So  low  he  fell  that 
all  means  for  his  salvation  were  already  short,  save  show- 
ing him  the  lost  people."  ^  How  agonizing  is  the  experience 
through  which  the  great  life  lessons  must  be  learnt,  Dante's 
whole  tragic  story  of  his  journey  through  hell  profoundly 
reveals  to  him  who  will  hear. 

We  have  seen  how  much  the  finite  self  has  to  do  with 
the  response  to  prayer,  yet  we  have  also  seen  that  man 
unaided  cannot  attain  to  salvation.  In  this  connection,  it 
is  interesting  to  consider  the  petitional  element  in  prayer. 

^  "Confessions  of  St.  Augustine,"  pp.  155-156. 

2  See  Paul's  account  of  sin  and  the  law  in  Romans  7. 

»  "  Purgatorio,"  Canto  XXX. 


THE   WAY  OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  321 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  spiritual  prayer  should  wholly 
lose  its  petitional  character,  which  is  a  survival  from  a 
savage  past.  But  prayer  cannot  lose  the  relation  to  an- 
other, and  in  the  attainment  of  spiritual  life  there  is  some- 
thing which  may  be  called  ^^  Divine  Grace/'  A  friend  of 
mine,  interested  in  these  matters,  asked  some  very  modern 
young  girls  (readers  of  Shaw,  Ibsen,  Wells,  and  the  rest) 
what  prayers  they  said.  She  found  that,  through  force  of 
habit,  they  were  saying  the  little  prayer  they  had  been 
taught  in  childhood  —  '^Now  I  lay  me  down  to  sleep''  — 
though  one  of  them  had  questioned  the  appropriateness 
of  this  prayer  for  a  grown  person.  My  friend  then  asked 
them  to  whom  they  prayed;  and  they  replied  to  their 
'better  self.' 

Now  the  question  is  —  what  is  the  content  of  this  better 
self,  what  is  it  thought  of  as  ?  Is  it  our  purely  individual 
better  self  —  so  making  prayer  largely  reflection  and 
monologue?  Is  it  'Hhe  great  Companion"  —  so  that 
prayer  becomes  a  dual  relation,  as  we  find  it  so  distinctly 
in  the  hymns  of  George  Herbert,  for  example?  Is  it  the 
subliminal  consciousness  embodying  the  spirit  of  the  race, 
as  Le  Bon  calls  it  —  our  suggestible,  emotional  self  of 
unconscious,  social  inheritance  and  tradition?  Is  it  the 
community  of  the  faithful  —  embodied  for  us  perhaps  in 
some  church,  city,  or  nation,  or  as  an  ideal,  universal  social 
consciousness?  Or  would  some  such  concept  as  ''the 
universal  individual"  better  express  our  meaning?  Psy- 
chologically, no  doubt,  this  content  differs  for  different 
temperaments.  A  reUgious  metaphysic,  not  content  with 
Pluralism,  would  seek  to  reconcile  all  experiences  in  some 
total  point  of  view  and  absolute  experience. 

The  presupposition  and  starting  point  of  the  religious 
consciousness,  its  sole  excuse  for  being,  so  to  speak,  is 
that  this  "better  self"  is  another  than  just  the  everyday 
consciousness.  An  empirical  theory  like  that  of  William 
James's,  which  seeks  to  identify  this  other  self  with  the 
subUminal  consciousness,  must  show,  however,  that  this 


322  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

consciousness  is  not  only  another,  but  also  a  higher,  more 
valuable,  self  than  the  everyday  consciousness.  Our  study 
of  this  theory  has  shown  that  in  the  last  analysis  the  sub- 
liminal consciousness  reduces  to  the  suggestible,  emotional 
consciousness,  and  therefore  that  the  proof  of  its  value 
depends  on  proving  the  two  propositions  a  and  h. 

(a)  The  subconscious  self  is  a  higher  type  of  self  than 
the  conscious  self. 

(6)  The  value  of  the  suggestion  (any  suggestion  given) 
can  be  determined. 

Now,  for  my  part,  I  accept  James's  conclusion  that  the 
experience  of  the  religious  mystic  is  valuable  to  Mm.  It 
may  be  really,  that  is  universally,  enlightening ;  but  it  is 
essentially  an  aesthetic,  an  inner,  an  emotional  value. 
Religion  is  to  a  great  extent  a  thing  of  imaginative,  emo- 
tional life.  Human  nature  universally  is  possessed  of  a 
kind  of  creative  energy  and  inspiration,  and  a  need  of  an 
outlet  for  the  passional  forces.  Therefore,  aesthetic  values 
and  mysticism  will,  I  think,  always  have  to  play  their  part 
in  any  religious  experience  which  shall  satisfy  the  cravings 
of  the  human  spirit.  But  inner  experience  is  variable ; 
its  value  has  a  wide  range.  What  is  aesthetically  valuable 
to  one  man  is  not  to  another,  and  there  is  no  way  of  prov- 
ing to  another  that  my  experience  is  the  highest  good. 
The  epicure's  enjoyment  of  a  good  dinner  is  an  aesthetic 
experience,  as  well  as  the  musician's  enjoyment  of  a 
symphony.  In  its  religious  form,  aesthetic  experience 
may  be  expressed  as  a  kind  of  rapture  of  insight  and  en- 
lightenment and  passionate  self-devotion,  —  what  per- 
haps Gautama  ^  felt  when,  sitting  under  the  Bo-tree  medi- 
tating on  the  mystery  and  misery  of  human  experience  and 
seeking  for  life's  meaning,  the  thought  came  to  him  of  the 
fourfold  path  of  deliverance  from  ignorance  and  suffering 
and  the  unsatisfied  longing  of  the  will  and  the  attainment 
of  the  enlightenment  and  peace  of  Nirvana. 

1  Compare  "Bachae"  of  Euripides,  "On  where  the  vision  of  holiness 
thriUs." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  323 

We  might  ask,  then  —  First,  is  there  an  absolute  and 
objective  aesthetic  value  which  all  men  ought  to  accept; 
and,  second,  is  this  standard  of  value  given  in  the  sub- 
liminal consciousness  ?  The  outcome  of  James's  theory  is, 
of  course.  Pluralism.  There  are  many  gods  and  many 
values.  It  is  all  an  individualistic  affair.  Now,  in  the 
first  place,  the  subliminal  consciousness,  even  if  we  exclude 
distinctly  abnormal  phenomena  (and  it  is  hard  to  find  the 
line  of  cleavage  between  the  normal  and  the  abnormal) 
has  various  manifestations,  such  as  the  impulsive  action 
of  mobs,  and  the  automatisms  of  revival  movements,  as 
those  under  Jonathan  Edwards,  Wesley,  and  the  Kentucky 
revivals  of  the  last  century.  There  seems  to  be  no  ground 
for  holding  that  the  inner  experience  of  emotion  is  in  itself 
divine.  Second,  aesthetic  experience  seems  to  be  an  inner 
and  passive  state  of  appreciation,  but  if  we  class  ^'hap- 
piness" under  aesthetic  values,  —  and  this  is  the  aesthetic 
end  which  most  men  seek  —  this  seems  to  involve  social 
relations  and  to  lead  over  to  activity  and  a  possible  con- 
flict of  interests.  For  why  should  my  happiness  count  for 
more  than  yours  or  another  man's  ?  And  surely  religious 
experience  has  its  active,  practical,  ethical  aspect  and 
value,  as  well  as  its  aesthetic  aspect  and  value.  The 
psychology  of  religion  seems  to  show  that  the  roots  of 
primitive  religion  are  buried  deep  in  the  emotional  life,  — 
''Deep  below  the  depth  of  conscious  being,"  if  you  will; 
at  the  same  time  the  history  of  rehgion,  I  think,  proves 
religion  to  have  been  in  the  beginning  more  a  social  than 
an  individual  affair ;  and  if  social,  moral  values  are  bound 
at  once  to  enter.  Certainly  in  the  moral  field,  —  what- 
ever we  may  think  of  the  aesthetic,  —  the  subliminal  con- 
sciousness furnishes  no  criterion  for  the  propositions  a  and 
b  above. 

James's  theory  of  the  "subliminal,"  with  its  "uprushes" 
as  the  manifestation  of  the  divine,  leads  to  the  individual- 
istic point  of  view :  God  is  myself,  any  one's  self ;  and 
empirically  I  cannot  prove  that  this  extra-consciousness 


324  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

of  mine  is  higher,  the  emotional  life  itself  divine,  for  the 
content  of  the  subliminal  is  variable.  It  depends  on  the 
suggestions  given,  and  the  values  of  these  again  cannot  be 
determined  by  the  subliminal  itself,  for  this  would  be  to 
argue  in  a  circle. 

After  all,  the  subliminal  consciousness  as  ^^more^^  than 
the  individual  consciousness  seems  ultimately  to  be  a 
social  consciousness  of  a  primitive  type,  a  kind  of  in- 
stinctive, suggestible,  emotional  race  inheritance,  or 
*' spirit  of  the  race,"  as  Le  Bon  calls  the  crowd  conscious- 
ness. As  such  a  consciousness  it  is,  I  think,  neither  good 
nor  bad.  It  is  simply  the  'Aplastic,  suggestible  conscious- 
ness," a  '^ buried  life"  which,  as  Mr.  Bradley  has  well  said, 
may  issue  in  ^^love  and  light  or  in  dirt  and  fire."  ^ 

In  other  words,  the  value  of  the  subliminal  consciousness 
will  be  determined  by  those  conscious  processes  which 
discipline  and  control  it.^  Now,  if  we  can  substitute  for 
this  form  of  the  social  consciousness  one  of  a  higher,  more 
orderly  type,  if  we  can  substitute  a  ^'social  self"  which  is 
characterized  by  activity,  self-control,  and  a  sense  of  re- 
sponsibihty,  as  well  as  by  feeling,  we  shall  get  nearer  to  an 
objective  criterion  for  determining  our  propositions  a  and  6. 

Such  a  social  consciousness  could  be  represented  for 
religion  as  ^Hhe  community  of  the  faithful,"  —  as  an  or- 
ganized institution  like  a  church,  or  by  some  social  group 
which,  working  for  the  welfare  of  humanity,  might  really 
be  actuated  by  a  religious  motive  in  the  deepest  sense; 
or  again,  it  might  be  expressed  in  an  ideal  form  as  the  New 
Jerusalem  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  or  St.  Augustine's  City 
of  God.3 

1  F.  H.  Bradley,  "Ethical  Studies." 

2  That  "social  suggestion"  is  not  always  for  good  appears,  as 
already  noted,  in  mob  action  and  in  some  revival  movements,  also, 
easily,  outside  of  the  distinctly  religious  field. 

^  Recently  there  has  been  a  tendency  to  define  this  highest  self 
in  terms  of  a  purely  social  consciousness  —  not  at  present  realized  in 
the  social  order,  to  be  sure,  but  which  could  be  so  realized.  Thus 
Professor  Ames  defines  religious  experience  as  "the  consciousness  of 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  325 

That  such  a  social  consciousness,  that  is,  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  spiritual  community  as  an  union  of  the  one  and 
the  many,  —  a  consciousness  which  differs  from  the  mob 
type  of  social  consciousness  through  its  self-control  and 
organization  in  relation  to  a  social  ideal  —  is  possible, 
we  are  able  easily  to  realize  in  idea,  but  it  is  not  difficult 
to  show  that  it  is  also  emotionally  and  concretely  realized. 

Let  me  give  a  few  illustrations.  It  is  realized,  emotion- 
ally, when  a  large  group  of  people  of  different  race,  tradi- 
tions, and  creed  join  in  singing  some  of  the  patriotic  songs 
or  familiar  hymns  such  as  Mrs.  Julia  Ward  Howe's  Battle 
Hymn  of  the  Republic,  or  Auld  Lang  Syne,  Nearer  My 
God  to  Thee,  For  All  the  Saints  (to  mention  a  few  only). 
For,  although  the  emotional  experience  of  each  individual 
in  the  group  refers  to  some  particular  experience,  yet 
the  emotion  itself  the  remembrance  of  days  it  may  be  of 
adventure  and  loyal  service ;  of  youth  and  friendship ;  the 
emotion  of  love  and  sorrow,  of  repentance  and  striving,  of 
aspiration  and  triumph,  is  a  common  emotion,  and  it  is 
different  from  any  individual  emotion  because  of  the  fact 
that  all  are  feeling  it  together. 

Again,  we  can  see  how  this  social  consciousness  is  con- 
cretely realized  in  small  groups  as  in  brotherhoods,  and  in 
the  members  of  a  church.  When  the  people  of  a  state 
watch  the  young  men  marching  forth,  with  the  band  play- 
ing and  their  country's  flag  flying,  to  join  the  cause  of 
liberty,  something  of  this  community-consciousness  is 
theirs.  Up  to  a  certain  point,  the  Crusades  of  the  Middle 
Ages  bound  together  in  a  common  cause  all  the  nations  of 
Christendom.  To  make  our  illustration  more  concrete 
by  relating  it  more  closely  to  the  present  day,  let  us  think 
of  a  modern  group  such,  perhaps,  as  the  members  of  a 

the  highest  social  values,"  "the  social  attitude  of  solidarity."  But 
some  of  us  prefer  to  this  definition  the  old  concept  of  our  fathers  — 
God  —  and  mean  by  this  name  a  consciousness  of  a  personal  or  supra- 
personal  type  —  "the  great  Companion"  —  the  soul  of  our  souls,  the 
being  in  whom  our  finite  lives  are  actually  completed  and  satisfied 
though  never  to  our  imperfect  and  finite  earthly  vision. 


326  THE   DKAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

woman's  club  in  an  American  city  who,  dissatisfied  with 
the  school  system  of  their  city,  dream  of  a  time  when  school 
work  shall  arouse  more  individual  interest  and  shall  em- 
body more  of  the  play  spirit,  shall  make  life  more  worth 
the  living  and  create  a  more  responsive  and  more  loyal 
type  of  men  and  women.  Amidst  much  misunderstanding 
and  perhaps  opposition  and  criticism,  let  us  suppose  that 
they  start  a  Froebelian  kindergarten  in  the  city,  and  later 
establish  a  playground  for  older  children.  After  a  time, 
the  fathers  and  mothers  of  the  children  are  ready  to  plead 
before  the  school  board  and  board  of  aldermen,  to  have 
these  new  activities  and  methods  of  education  adopted 
as  a  part  of  the  school  system.  Then,  at  last,  there  comes 
a  day  when  all  the  people  of  the  community  gather  on  their 
Common  to  watch  hundreds  of  children  from  the  different 
schoolyard  playgrounds  take  part  in  athletic  sports,  games, 
folk  dancing,  and  singing.  Now,  no  doubt,  the  thoughts 
and  emotions  of  the  different  individuals  gathered  there 
to  watch  the  training  of  the  young  citizens  of  the  future 
city  are  various,  yet  I  maintain  that  there  is  something  in 
coromon  which  makes  the  consciousness  there  present  a 
social  or  community  consciousness.  What  is  this  social 
experience  as  past,  present,  and  future  rush  together? 
It  is,  in  part,  a  love  of  the  child  universal  (not  merely  of 
each  one's  own  child).  It  is,  in  part,  a  common  thrill 
with  a  sense  of  the  golden  future  when  these  children  shall 
be  the  worthy  citizens  of  a  noble  city  which  they  have 
largely  created ;  even  more  is  it  the  sense  that  all,  old  and 
young,  are  bound  together  in  loyalty  and  devotion  to  a 
common  cause  —  that  is,  to  the  community  and  to  the 
highest  ideals  for  it,  as  each  one  is  able  to  embody  these 
ideals  to  himself.  It  is,  in  fact,  an  attitude  consecrated 
to  the  highest  ideals  in  relation  to  actual  life,  that  is,  to 
God.  And  so,  at  last,  we  can  come  to  say  not  only : 
''Beloved  City  of  Athens,''  or  Rome,  or  New  York,  or 
Boston,  but  ''Beloved  City  of  God." 

In  such  a  social  consciousness  as  this,  every  individual 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  327 

iias  to  be  considered  in  the  light  of  the  whole;  but  the 
whole  is  what  it  is  because  of  the  character  of  each  in- 
dividual. Its  working  principle  would  be  an  ethical  one, 
which  could  be  expressed  in  some  such  formula  as  Kant's 
categorical  imperative.  Or,  as  religion  would  put  it,  to 
each  individual  —  So  act  that  the  will  of  God,  or  the  uni- 
versal will,  shall  be  expressed  in  your  life  and  in  that  of 
the  community  as  a  whole.  Augustine  has  expressed  this 
idea  in  his  notion  of  the  Church  —  the  temple  of  God  — 
based  on  two  principles,  —  ^'Remissionem  peccatorum 
stat  ecclesia  quae  est  in  terris"  —  and  ''In  caritate  stat 
ecclesia  ..."  that  is,  through  a  spiritual  bond  the  true 
church  is  an  union  of  many  in  one. 

The  difficulty  is  that  such  a  social  consciousness  which 
can  really  serve  as  a  criterion  is  never  fully  objectified. 
The  principle  has  numerous  applications,  but  it  is  carried 
out  only  here  and  there,  in  an  isolated  individual  or  in 
small  groups;  as  universal  it  exists  only  as  an  ideal.^ 
Nevertheless,  this  ideal  is  forever  trying  to  express  itself 
in  social  traditions,  customs  and  institutions  and  creeds, 
and  so  wins  partial  realization  and  fulfilment.  Religion 
is  not  content  to  be  a  poetical  expression  of  mere  dreaming, 
and  to  dwell  in  a  world  apart,  an  unreal  world ;  but,  in- 
deed, like  poetry  itself,  it  seeks  to  find  itself  in  the  outer 
and  everyday  life  of  man,  and  to  make  these  outer  forms 
valuable.  But  again,  these  ''tables  of  values '^  are  only,  as 
Nietzsche  puts  it,  "a  transition"  and  "a  destruction." 
The  old  idols  have  to  be  broken,  and  new  values  substi- 
tuted ;  and  the  first  impulse  to  these  new  values  seems  to 
come  from  the  individual,  not  from  the  social  group.  He 
is  the  creator,  and  the  martyr. 

To  return  again  to  the  problem  of  the  efficacy  of  prayer : 
If  we  pass  over  the  difficulty  of  psychophysical  caus- 
ation, really  still  involved  in  the  "reserve  energy"  theory 

^  This  ideal  of  an  all-inclusive  self-consciousness  is,  I  take  it,  what 
we  mean  by  God  in  relation  to  our  finite  social  life.  Yet  we  believe 
that  He  also  is  or  exists. 


328  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

(see  Starbuck^s  account),^  we  have  still  the  difRculty  of 
determining  how  the  process  of  the  subliminal  conscious- 
ness as  a  response  to  prayer  is  a  divine  response;  for 
the  surplus  energy  of  the  subliminal  is  not  in  itself  to 
be  identified  with  God,  and  we  can  hardly  say  that  the 
experience  of  emotion  or  the  mere  sense  of  wholeness  and 
repose  is  itself  the  divine,  —  that  is,  it  is  not  a  priori  evi- 
dent that  the  whole  is  better  or  nobler  than  the  part. 
What  we  need  here  is  a  criterion  of  value,  an  ethical  judg- 
ment, an  ought  or  ideal ;  and  this  leads  us  directly  over 
to  the  other  kind  of  efficacy  and  the  ethical  way  of  prayer ; 
and  it  is  really  here,  I  think  —  to  the  world  of  ethical 
values  —  that  the  deepest  meaning  of  the  efficacy  of 
prayer  belongs,  and  this  is  what  our  analysis  of  the  con- 
crete prayer  state  revealed. 

The  ethical,  i.e.  the  truly  spiritual,  form  of  prayer  is  at 
once  an  appeal  to  an  ideal  reality,  and  a  concentration  of 
the  mind  upon  its  own  thought  of  the  highest  good ;  further 
it  is  a  resolve  to  carry  out  the  vision.  It  is,  i.e.,  an 
active  attitude.  The  prayer  is  for  the  coining  of  the  spirit 
of  enlightenment  and  devotion,  —  "the  understanding 
heart  ^'  for  which  Solomon  is  said  to  have  prayed.  Or, 
as  the  prayer  of  Socrates,  which  was  ''simply  for  things 
good,  because  the  gods  know  best  what  is  good."  If 
there  is  a  petition  for  the  fulfilment  of  any  particular  de- 
sires, these  desires  are,  to  speak  symbolically,  laid  upon 
the  altar  of  the  Lord ;  that  is,  the  petition  is  like  that  of 
the  prayer  in  Gethsemane,  —  it  involves  the  condition : 
be  it  granted  only  if  in  accord  with  the  will  of  the  world. 
Further,  as  Emerson  said,  there  is  no  need  to  seek  for  the 
solution  of  private  riddles,  —  no  need  for  oracles  and  divi- 
nations, —  for  such  prayer  is  the  beginning  of  its  own 
response.  The  question  and  the  answer,  the  prayer  and 
the  response,  are  one.  For  this  attitude  of  prayer  is 
itself  at  once  the  effort  to  seek  for  insight,  and  the  resolve 
to  live  out  the  insight  when  discovered.     No  man  can 

^Starbuck,  "Psychology  of  Religious  Experience." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE ITS   FORMS  329 

earnestly  pray  for  the  coming  of  the  Kingdom  of  God,  for 
the  realization  of  the  universal  will  in  himself  or  the  world, 
without  meaning  to  do  his  part  towards  the  fulfilment. 
This  meaning  is  the  beginning  of  the  act,  and  the  act  again 
leads  to  greater  insight  into  the  meaning.  This  is  the 
revelation  of  prayer.  Again,  the  dwelling  on  divine 
issues  tends  to  a  universalization  of  the  will  of  the  finite 
and  so  to  the  negation  of  purely  personal  aims.  Such  an 
attitude  is  in  itself  an  unto  mystica,  communion,  or  '^ascent 
of  the  mind  to  God.'' 

So  the  efficacy  of  prayer  is  ultimately  the  power  to  live 
the  eternal  life  in  the  world.  ^^The  Kingdom  of  God" 
said  Paul,  ^'is  not  meat  and  drink,  but  righteousness  and 
peace  and  joy  in  the  Holy  Spirit."  But  to  seek  first  the 
Kingdom  of  God  and  righteousness  is  also  to  some  extent 
to  have  other  things  added  unto  you.  We  know  from  the 
prophetical  literature^  that  the  Hebrews  came  to  beheve  in 
the  magic  power  of  virtue.  The  righteous  remnant,  '*  the 
ransomed  of  the  Lord,"  was  to  be  saved  and  should  re- 
turn with  singing  to  the  blessedness  of  the  New  Jeru- 
salem. If  we  turn  to  that  ''  master  in  literature  and  also 
in  religious  experience,"  —  Dante,  —  and  consider  the 
account  which  he  gives  us  of  the  seven  deadly  sins  of  the 
church,  we  can  see  the  ill  effects  or  punishment  of  these 
in  the  appalling  images  of  woe  of  the  Inferno.  But  it  is 
impossible  to  hold  continuously  the  attitude  of  ethical 
prayer  and  at  the  same  time  to  listen  to  these  voices, 
alluring  though  they  be.  And  yet  this  is  not  the  whole 
story.  Primitive  prayer  sought  through  magic  spells 
and  petitions  to  drive  away  all  forms  of  ill ;  but  in  the 
world  of  spiritual  values,  to  do  away  with  all  misfortune 
and  suffering  is  not  necessarily  an  effect  of  prayer.  We 
have  already  analyzed  the  prayer  state  in  relation  to 
sorrowful  experience.  The  experience  of  prayer  of  St. 
Paul  is  illuminating  in  this  respect ;  and  we  may  take  it 
as  a  test  case  rather  than  such  cases  as  that  of  George 

1  In  Isaiah,  for  example. 


330  THE   DKAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Miiller,  or  instances  of  the  controlling  of  storms  by  prayer 
or  the  cure  of  disease. 

Paul  felt  himself  called  to  a  great  task.  But  he  was 
much  hampered  by  some  physical  infirmity  with  which 
he  was  afflicted.  How  could  he  undertake  so  great  a 
task,  weak  and  hindered  as  he  was  by  this  heavy  burden  ? 
Earnestly  he  besought  the  Lord  that  the  hindrance  might 
be  removed :  — 

"There  was  given  me  a  thorn  in  the  flesh,  a  messenger  of  Satan  to 
buffet  me,  lest  I  should  be  exalted  above  measure.  For  this  thing  I 
besought  the  Lord  thrice,  that  it  might  depart  from  me.  And  he  said 
unto  me :  'My  grace  is  sufficient  for  thee.^ "  ^ 

Paul  was  not  to  gain  in  efficiency  through  the  removal  of 
the  obstacle.  His  prayer  was  answered,  but  the  answer 
was  a  spiritual  answer  —  *^My  grace  is  sufficient  for  thee.'' 
The  Subliminal,  a  Form  of  Social  Consciousness. 
—  In  relation  to  the  subliminal-self  theory  of  the  efficacy 
of  prayer,  we  may  conclude  :  This  ''subliminal  self  rep- 
resents no  magic  influence.  This  concept  rather  sum- 
marizes, —  when  it  is  used  to  apply  to  a  comparatively 
normal  experience,  —  our  social-racial  inheritance ;  in 
James's  words,  ''deposits  from  life  experience"  —  and 
further,  in  so  far  as  these  experiences  are  not  directly  un- 
der the  control  of  the  central  or  most-self-conscious  per- 
sonality.^ They  may  appear  as  habit  reactions  or  as 
caprices,  and  usually  they  come  with  a  strong  emotional 
accompaniment.  They  may  be  so  much  dissociated  from 
normal  reactions  as  to  pass  over  the  borderland  into  the 
abnormal.  But  even  in  the  normal  "subliminal"  the  in- 
dividual is  in  the  control  of  something  not  altogether  him- 
self, —  a  fact  which  religious  experience  emphasizes  and 
religious  theory  builds  upon.     But  as  we  have  seen,  there 

1  2  Corinthians  12. 

2  Such  a  type  of  social  consciousness  is  a  limit  for  good  or  ill  to 
human  freedom,  e.g.  social  suggestion  of  the  mob-consciousness ;  and, 
see  further  the  account  of  the  subliminal  consciousness  in  the  Journal 
of  Abnormal  Psychology. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  331 

is  no  criterion  in  the  nature  of  the  '^subliminar^  itself  for 
judging  these  experiences  to  be  things  of  worth. 

Prayer  Belongs  to  the  World  of  Ethical  Values. 

—  In  relating  himself  of  his  own  choice,  though  it  is  also 
his  ^^bounden  duty  and  service,''  to  the  higher  type  of 
social  consciousness,  —  namely,  to  that  which  is  the 
embodiment  of  a  rational,  self-controlled,  orderly  and 
universal  Will,  that  is,  in  becoming  himself  a  ''social  self" 

—  the  individual  regains  his  freedom.  He  may  even 
through  the  free  expression  of  his  individuality  add  some- 
thing to  the  embodiment  of  the  social  will,  and  help  to 
bring  it  nearer  to  his  ideal  of  a  divine  unity.  This  will, 
which  is  at  once  a  universal  (social)  will  and  fimdamentally 
the  individual's  own  (free)  will,  is  then  the  universal  ele- 
ment (the  invariant)  in  the  social-individual  process  as  a 
whole,  for  this  will  is  one. 

Such  a  will-attitude  on  the  part  of  the  individual,  — 
that  is,  the  attitude  of  a  will  which  wills  the  universal  and 
eternal  will,  —  is  both  the  prayer  and  the  answer.  It  is 
an  appeal  to  the  Spirit  of  the  universe,  the  divine  Grace, 
to  come  and  dwell  in  the  heart;  and  it  is  an  auto-sug- 
gestion of  the  individual  and  an  effort  to  begin  at  once  for 
his  part  to  live  the  life  of  the  Spirit.  In  the  words  of  the 
Lord's  Prayer:  ''Thy  kingdom  come.  Thy  will  be  done 
.  .  .  Lead  us  not  into  temptation."  This  prayer  can  be 
expressed  in  the  form  of  auto-suggestion.  But  such  a 
prayer  cannot,  of  course,  be  completely  efficacious  until  it 
becomes  a  universal  prayer,  i.e.  a  will-attitude  on  the  part 
of  every  man. 

Summary 

A  study  of  the  essence  of  prayer  brings  us  face  to  face 
again  with  the  universal  elements  of  religious  experience 
which  we  analyzed  in  Chapter  II,  viz. :  — 

(1)  a  state  of  dissatisfaction  (hell,  "wheel  of  existence"), 

(2)  an  experience  of  satisfaction  both  at  once  an  ideal  and  an 
immediate  experience  (heaven,  Nirvana,  etc.), 

(3)  a  way  of  life,  or  a  way  of  salvation. 


332  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

This  is  expressed   very   clearly  in  the   Hindu   prayer, 
already  quoted :  — 

"Out  of  the  unreal  lead  me  to  the  real ;  out  of  darkness  lead  me  to 
light ;  out  of  death  lead  me  to  deathlessness." 

Prayer  is  a  complex  experience,  and  for  this  reason  it  is 
difficult  to  give  a  clear  interpretation  of  the  essence  of 
prayer  and  of  the  response  to  prayer.  For  prayer,  as  we 
have  seen,  is  a  mystical  and  individual  experience.  Yet, 
certainly,  prayer  is  also  social  and  it  is  profoundly  ethical. 

Thus  our  study  reveals  to  us  once  more  the  fundamental 
trend  of  religious  experience  as  a  whole ;  religious  experi- 
ence is  both  mystical  and  practical,  both  individual  and 
social,  and  it  is  at  once  static  and  dynamic. 

Moreover,  in  the  prayer  experience  as  it  disclosed  itself 
in  the  various  types  of  prayer,  we  discovered  certain 
fundamental  attributes  or  elements.     These  elements  are : 

First  the  constraining  power  of  magic. 

Second.  Observation  of  the  ways,  physical  and  psychical, 
of  the  order  of  the  universe. 

Third.  The  petitional  form. 

Fourth.  The  mystic  consciousness,  which  finds  itself 
at  peace  in  the  presence  of  God. 

We  found  these  elements  variously  blended  in  the  differ- 
ent classes  of  prayers  which  we  have  examined.  None  of 
these  elements  seem  to  be  wholly  lost  in  the  prayers  of  the 
ages,  and  now  we  want  to  know  how  they  may  be  inter- 
preted to  a  modern  world,  to  a  rational  consciousness,  and 
for  an  ethical  religion. 

1.  Magic:  The  constraining  power  which  primitive 
man  found  in  the  spells  and  incantations  of  sympathetic 
magic  becomes  in  spiritual  prayer  the  constraining  power 
of  the  human  will,  both  the  individual  will  and  the  social 
will. 

In  our  further  analysis,  we  discovered  the  subliminal 
consciousness  or  self,  and  we  found  that  this  self  was  a 
kind  of  social  self,  for  it  was  suggestible ;   and  hereupon 


THE   WAY  OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  333 

arose  the  idea  that  magic  compulsion  means  the  compul- 
sion of  auto-suggestion  and  social  suggestion. 

Suggestion  and  the  efficacy  of  Prayer.  —  In  prayer  then  as 
auto-suggestion  and  social  suggestion  something  of  the 
compulsion  of  old-world  magic  survives.  By  dwelling  on 
thoughts  of  God  as  wholeness,  peace,  and  safety,  on  the 
thought  that  ultimately  all  is  well  with  the  world,  and  by 
attempting  to  identify  one's  self  with  or  lose  one's  self  in 
this  wholeness  and  peace,  —  prayer  seems  to  have  the  effect 
of  concentrating  and  stimulating  the  latent  energies,  and 
so  makes  for  courage,  strength,  and  calmness  of  mind,  a 
sense  of  emancipation,  a  quickening  of  the  whole  life. 
Christian  Science  carries  this  to  the  extreme,  —  as  is  done 
also  in  the  ''Life  of  Prayer"  in  a  technical  sense,  the  life 
of  the  cloister  and  the  monastic  cell  in  which  the  life  of 
the  world  is  shut  quite  away.  Here  there  is  a  tendency 
to  assist  the  efficacy  of  prayer  by  means  of  "sensitizers," 
as  in  other  forms  of  suggestion  and  hypnotism. 

In  its  purest  form,  we  find  this  type  of  efficacy  expressed 
in  Emerson,  though  he  may  not  make  use  of  the  actual 
language  of  prayer.  I  will  give  one  quotation  from  the 
''Over-Soul."    The  whole  essay  bears  on  the  subject. 

"We  live  in  succession,  in  division,  in  parts,  in  particles.  Mean- 
time within  man  is  the  soul  of  the  whole ;  the  wise  silence ;  the  uni- 
versal beauty,  to  which  every  part  and  particle  is  equally  related; 
the  eternal  One.  And  this  deep  power  in  which  we  exist,  and  whose 
beatitude  is  all-accessible  to  us,  is  not  only  self-sufficing  and  perfect 
in  every  hour,  but  the  act  of  seeing  and  the  thing  seen,  the  seer  and  the 
spectacle,  the  subject  and  the  object,  are  one." 

"Hence  there  is  no  asking  of  particular  questions,  or  making  par- 
ticular requests,  or  interpreting  of  oracles." 

"These  questions  about  the  future  are  a  confession  of  sin.  .  .  . 
The  true  communication  is  an  influx  of  the  Divine  mind  into  ours.  .  .  . 
It  inspires  in  man  an  ineffable  trust  .  .  .  which  sweeps  away  all 
particular  uncertainties  and  fears,  and  all  need  to  seek  a  solution  of 
private  riddles.  ...  So  more  and  more  as  the  surges  of  everlasting 
nature  enter  into  me  and  I  become  public  and  hmnan  in  my 
actions.  ...  So  I  come  to  live  in  thoughts  and  act  with  energies 
that  are  immortal." 


334  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

This  is  the  more  aesthetic  and  mystical  type  of  rehgious 
experience.  It  may  be  called  the  way  of  grace.  The 
effect  of  prayer  here  is  the  power  to  view  the  world  differ- 
ently, to  see  God's  presence  everywhere,  and  so  to  find  new 
significance  in  life  and  the  possibility  of  a  changed  attitude 
of  will,  a  trustful  mind  and  even  the  experience  of  blessed- 
ness, peace,  and  freedom. 

This  is  the  positive  side.  On  the  negative,  it  is  a  negat- 
ing of,  or  not  letting  the  mind  dwell  on  the  things  which 
make  for  the  life  of  the  world,  on  worry  or  personal  cares, 
or  temptations,  ix.  on  the  disintegrating  forces  generally. 
Thus  the  life  is  purified  and  freed. 

As  social  suggestion  we  have  the  religious  phenomena 
of  revivals,  the  Crusade  movement,  prayer  meeting,  and 
public  services  in  general.  The  effort  of  a  group  of  freely 
united  individuals  to  bring  about  some  ideal  and  funda- 
mentally religious  end,  may  act  as  social  suggestion  to  the 
rest  of  the  community.  George  Miiller's  case  seems  to 
be  one  of  indirect  social  suggestion. 

But  behind  suggestions  are  ideals  and  purposes.  Sug- 
gestions are  efficacious  only  when  there  is  a  turning  of  the 
will,  and  the  decision  of  the  will  depends,  in  the  last  analy- 
sis, upon  its  recognition  and  acceptance  of  an  absolute  and 
eternal,  that  is,  of  a  constraining,  ideal. 

2.  The  observation  of  and  experimenting  with  nature 
and  the  statistical  method  resulting  therefrom,  which  we 
found  in  the  group  of  prayers  called  "  divination,"  become 
in  spiritual  religion  a  reflection,  rather,  upon  experience  as 
an  whole  and  not  merely  upon  its  superficial  aspects ;  and 
the  lesson  learnt  therefrom  is  of  the  true  method  of  adjust- 
ment to  the  spiritual  laws  of  the  universe.  That  is,  this 
type  of  prayer  leads  to  a  perception  of  new  values  and  to 
a  transformed  life  in  relation  thereto. 

3.  Spiritual  religion  distrusts  the  petitional  element  in 
prayer.  Nevertheless,  we  found  that  this  element  never 
wholly  disappears  from  prayer.  The  petitional  form 
implies  the  appeal  to  the  ''more''  than  ourselves.    We 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE ITS   FORMS  335 

recognize  our  own  finitude,  —  that  we  are  not  able  of  our- 
selves to  realize  our  best  selfhood  or  to  do  all  we  would  to 
serve  the  highest  good.  Petition  implies  ^'another,"  one 
who  will  respond  to  man's  appeal.  For  this  reason,  we 
cannot  find  the  efficacy  of  prayer  entirely  in  the  power  of 
the  individual  will.  In  prayer,  man  consciously  attempts 
to  put  himself  into  relation  to  his  ideal  of  the  absolute 
good.  He  appeals  to  the  all-knower  of  the  universe  to 
answer  his  demands,  to  heal  his  wounds ;  i.e.  he  seeks  con- 
sciously to  get  into  touch  with  the  Divine,  and  at  the  same 
time  he  yields  himself  to  the  intimations  which  come  to 
him  (i.e.  he  abandons  his  private  and  particular  will). 

Then  comes  the  mystic  sense  of  unity,  self-surrender, 
and  self-mastery  which,  beginning  in  the  experience  of 
prayer  finally  pervades  the  whole  religious  life.  So  we 
are  brought  back  once  more  to  the  recognition  of  ideals  as 
the  dynamic  power  in  prayer.  These,  again,  may  be  in- 
dividual or  social  ideals,  aesthetic  or  ethical.  The  spirit- 
ual prayer  does  not  ask  that  something  contrary  to  the 
laws  of  nature  shall  take  place  in  order  that  its  particular 
desire  shall  be  brought  to  pass.  It  seeks  rather  a  change 
in  the  will  itself.  It  demands  that  the  individual  will  shall 
be  purified,  enlightened,  and  disciplined  into  conformity 
with  the  deepest  will  of  the  world.  It  does  ask  therefore, 
that  a  miracle  shall  take  place,  —  that  man  shall  be  trans- 
formed and  born  again  from  the  natural  man  into  the 
spiritual  man,  from  the  partial  and  finite  point  of  view 
into  that  of  the  whole  or  eternal.  It  prays,  '^Create  a 
pure  heart  and  renew  a  right  spirit  within  me."  ^'What 
should  I  do  without  God ! "  cried  the  unhappy  Sonia 
in  Dostoieffsky's  novel  of  ^'  Crime  and  Punishment.' '  The 
greatest  amongst  the  Hebrew  prophets,  Moses,  Isaiah, 
and  Jeremiah,  record  how  in  their  sense  of  very  probable 
failure  in  the  great  tasks  to  which  they  felt  themselves 
called,  God  spoke  to  them  to  strengthen  them,  to  give 
them  power  and  courage  for  the  work.  Very  often,  in 
religious  experience,  it  is  recorded  that  the  response  to 


336  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

prayer  came  through  a  biblical  text.  St.  Augustine  and 
John  Bunyan,  in  their  autobiographies,  have  made  much  of 
this  method,^  and  many  an  humble  soul  has  reported  how 
in  some  great  crisis  of  fear  or  anguish  of  spirit,  help  has 
come  to  meet  the  experience  through  the  suggestion  of 
some  verse  of  the  Bible,  through  some  hymn  or  psalm 
such  as  the  following : 

"  The  Lord  is  my  Shepherd ;  I  shall  not  want."         (23d  Psalm.) 

"Thou  shalt  keep  him  in  perfect  peace  whose  mind  is  staid  on 
Thee."  (Isaiah  40 :  30,  31.) 

"  They  that  wait  upon  the  Lord  shall  renew  their  strength,  they  shall 
mount  upon  wings  Hke  an  eagle,  they  shall  run  and  not  be  weary, 
they  shall  walk  and  not  faint." 

"In  quietness  and  in  confidence  shall  be  your  strength." 

(Isaiah  30  :  15.) 

"Be  strong,  and  of  a  good  courage,  fear  not,  nor  be  afraid  .  .  . 
for  the  Lord  thy  God,  He  it  is  that  doth  go  with  thee.  He  wiQ  not 
fail  thee,  nor  forsake  thee." 

(Deut.  31 : 6.) 

"I  will  cry  unto  God  most  high;  unto  God  that  performeth  all 
things  for  me." 

(Psalm  57:2.) 

This  form  of  response  has  evidently  its  social  implica- 
tions, and  this  thought  of  the  social  could  be  carried  much 
further  into  the  ritual  and  worship  of  institutional  re- 
ligion. Auto-suggestion  and  social  suggestion,  then,  play 
their  part  in  prayer,  and  yet  these  are  really  effective  only 
when  there  is  a  turning  of  the  will,  which  means  an  in- 
dividual decision  or  choice.^ 

Prayer  as  the  Attitude  of  Self-control  and  In- 
sight. —  As  a  final  simimary,  we  may  say  the  only  truly 
spiritual  prayer  is  that  which  means  a  re-creation  of  the 
divine  will  in  the  finite  will  through  enlightenment,  self- 

1  St.  Augustine,  "Confessions"  ;  John  Bunyan,  "Grace  Abounding 
to  the  Chief  of  Sinners." 

2  The  two  attitudes  are  combined  in  the  following  prayer  of  Augus- 
tine :  — 

*'  O  God  our  Father  who  dost  exhort  us  to  pray,  and  who  dost  grant 
what  we  ask,  if  only  when  we  ask  we  live  a  better  hfe ;  hear  me,"  eto. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  337 

discipline,  self-mastery,  and  self-surrender.  This  is  a  free 
effort  of  the  individual,  and  the  deep  magic  of  it  lies  in 
man's  unshaken  belief  that  the  universe  is  in  accord  with 
his  essential  ideals  and  with  his  earnest  endeavors  to  serve 
them.  And  Jacob  said,  ''I  will  not  let  thee  go  except 
thou  bless  me."  Prayer  is  therefore  also  social,  as  well  as 
individual,  for  it  is  an  appeal  to  the  community  of  spirits,^ 
to  God,  to  strengthen  the  individual  for  his  task.  Such  a 
prayer  is  answered. 

The  suggestible  consciousness  depends  ultimately  on  a  de- 
sire of  the  will  to  put  itself  into  touch  with  the  absolute  ideal, 
i.e.  metaphysically  we  should  say  the  union  is  a  spiritual 
one.  Our  world  is  a  world  of  self-conscious  spirit,  and  when 
we  have  found  the  way  to  identify  ourselves  with  the 
World-Spirit,  we  have  ipso  facto  found  unity  and  peace. 

In  the  end,  then,  the  constraining  dynamic  of  prayer  is 
found,  on  the  one  hand,  in  the  decision  of  the  will  to  devote 
itself  to  that  ideal  of  life  which  reason  has  judged  to  ex- 
press the  highest  good ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  it  means 
the  seizure  of  the  individual  by  the  absolute  ideal.  As 
St.  Thomas  Aquinas  said:  ''Man  could  not  choose  the 
highest  unless  Divine  Grace  working  in  him  had  put  into 
his  heart  so  to  choose."  Prayer,  then,  is  communion  with 
the  self-conscious  spirit  of  the  universe  through  a  yielding 
to  its  intimations  and  at  the  same  time  by  an  active  self- 
consecration  to  its  commands. 

The  prayer  state  is  a  rhythmic  state,  a  whole  of  parts. 
It  is  a  give-and-take  relation,  a  dual  state  of  appeal  and 
response,  which  is  yet  one  whole.  And  in  this  dual  or 
rhythmic  form  of  prayer,  in  its  cry  and  response,  in  its 
seeking  and  finding,  we  get  a  suggestion  of  the  form  of 
religious  experience  as  a  whole. 

So  prayer  is  at  once  dynamic  and  static.  It  is  static 
because  the  only  direct  change  wrought  by  prayer  is  a 

1 "  Speak  to  her  all  things  holy  and  high 

Powers  of  the  height,  powers  of  the  deep."  —  Tennyson. 
z 


338  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

change  which  brings  the  finite  will  into  accord  with  the 
already  perfect  will  of  God.  Yet  prayer  is  dynamic, 
for  the  change  is  the  greatest  of  all  changes,  and  some- 
thing really  happens  —  it  is  a  moral  transformation,  a 
new  birth.  It  is  the  miracle  of  miracles.  This  miracle 
is  the  overcoming,  for  the  sake  of  a  universal  ideal  — 
for  ''a  vision  of  holiness"  —  through  self-discipline,  self- 
control,  and  self-dedication,  sometimes,  or  rather  at  the 
same  time  through  relaxation  and  yielding  to  ''Divine 
Grace''  ''the  mutability  and  insatiability  of  the  finite 
wiU.'' 

"Prayer,"  says  Mozoomdas,  "when  wrung  out  of  the 
soul,  is  the  transmuting  force  by  which  the  passions  are 
changed  into  their  opposite  virtues. 

"  It  is  the  magic  wand,  the  touch  of  which  turns  ashes 
into  gold." 


"Still,  still  the  secret  presses; 
The  veiling  clouds  draw  down." 

—  R.  W.  Emerson. 

"The  ultimate  Being  is  Spirit;  in  other  words,  it  has  appeared, 
it  is  revealed  .  .  .  this  spiritual  unity  —  unity  where  the  distinctions 
are  merely  in  the  form  of  moments,  or  are  transcended  and  maintained. 


"The  world  is  no  doubt  implicitly  reconciled  with  the  Divine  Being ; 
and  that  Being  no  doubt  knows  that  it  no  longer  regards  the  object 
as  alienated  from  itself,  but  as  one  with  itself  in  its  Love.  But  for 
self-consciousness  this  immediate  presence  has  not  yet  the  form  and 
shape  of  spiritual  reality.  Thus  the  spirit  of  the  communion  is,  in 
its  immediate  consciousness,  separated  from  the  religious  consciousness, 
which  declares,  indeed,  that  these  two  modes  of  consciousness  im- 
plicitly and  inherently  are  not  separated,  but  this  is  an  implication 
which  is  not  realized  or  has  not  yet  become  an  absolute  explicit  self- 
existence  as  well." 

—  Hegel,  "Phenomenology  of  Mind." 


CHAPTER  V   (Continued) 
The  Way  of  Life  —  Its  Forms 

Part  III.     The  Many  and  the  One 

The  one-many  form  of  the  religious  consciousness  is 
clearly,  intimately  related  to  those  other  forms  already 
considered,  viz.  to  the  eternal-temporal  form  and  to  the 
static-dynamic  form.  The  opposition  which  it  involves 
has  been  all  along  implied  in  our  discussion  alike  of  the 
mystical  as  opposed  to  the  practical  reUgious  experience, 
and  of  the  social  as  opposed  to  the  individual  experience. 
It  is  in  the  former  of  these  oppositions  that  the  one-many 
form  first  appears  as  offering  an  essentially  religious  prob- 
lem. We  may  take  as  typical  the  problem  of  the  Buddha 
(imder  the  Bo-tree). 

To  overcome  the  misery  of  existence,  it  is  necessary  to 
renounce  earthly  life,  to  give  one^s  self  up  to  trances  and 
to  the  enlightenment,  the  peace,  the  rapture,  and,  at  last, 
to  the  nothingness,  of  Nirvana.  Nevertheless,  the  Buddha 
felt  constrained  to  teach  the  doctrine.  He  must  help 
others  to  share  in  the  blessing  he  had  found.  In  a  word,  he 
must  make  his  individual  experience  a  social  experience. 

Having  attained  to  the  deliverance  from  rebirth  and 
to  the  incomparable  security  of  a  Nirvana  free  from  cor- 
ruption, the  Blessed  One  reasoned  :  — 

''This  doctrine  to  which  I  have  attained  is  profound,  recondite, 
difficult  of  comprehension  .  .  .  intelligible  only  to  the  wise.  Man- 
kind on  the  other  hand  is  captivated,  entranced,  held  spellbound  by 
its  lusts,  it  is  hard  for  them  to  understand  the  doctrine  of  Dependent 
Origination  and  how  all  the  constituents  of  being  may  be  made  to 
subside  and  Nirvana  be  attained.  If  I  were  to  teach  the  Doctrine, 
others  would  fail  to  understand  me,  and  my  vexation  and  trouble 
would  be  great. 

341 


342  THE    DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

"Thus,  O  Priest,  did  I  ponder,  and  my  mind  was  disinclined  to 
action,  and  to  any  proclaiming  of  the  Doctrine.  ..." 

^'Then,  gazing  over  the  world  with  the  eye  of  a  Buddha'' 
he  beholds  ^^how  all  mankind  is  plunged  in  sorrow  —  yet 
that  there  is  a  great  variety  of  people  with  a  great  variety 
of  dispositions  and  of  faculty — as  in  a  pond  of  blue  lotuses, 
of  water  roses,  or  of  white  lotuses,  some  do  not  reach  the 
surface  of  the  water  but  grow  under  water  while  others 
shoot  up  above  the  water,  so  there  will  be  found  some 
who  will  understand  the  doctrine. " 

"Rise  thou,  0  Hero,  Victor  in  the  Battle! 
O  Leader,  Guiltless  One,  go  amongst  the  nations ! 
The  Doctrine  let  the  Buddha  teach, 
Some  will  be  found  to  master  it."  ^ 

While  primitive  man  worshipped  many  gods,  the  en- 
lightened religious  consciousness  has  on  the  whole  tended 
to  the  ^^One,"  and  in  this  experience  has  sought  refuge 
from  the  storm  and  stress  of  life  with  its  bewildering 
manyness  and  variety.  To  the  mediaeval  Christian  the 
way  to  the  monastery  was  the  way  to  the  holy  life,  and 
many  an  ancient  faith  has  dwelt  on  absorption  in  the 
divine,  on  the  mystic  vision,  the  rapture  and  the  enlighten- 
ment of  individual  experience.  To  lose  one's  life  is  to 
save  it.  Renounce  yourself,  indulge  in  ascetic  disciplines, 
be  nothing,  as  indeed  you  already  are  in  God's  sight.  This 
is  the  keynote  to  the  meditations  of  an  a  Kempis ;  like- 
wise, although  in  a  more  ecstatic  form,  it  is  the  experience 
of  the  later  Christian  Mystics  (St.  Teresa,  the  Quietists, 
etc.).  ^'The  soul,"  says  Tauler,  ''must  lose  itself  in  the 
love  of  God  as  a  drop  of  water  is  lost  in  the  ocean."  The 
essence  of  this  experience  is  the  surrender  of  the  individual 
finite  will  to  the  absolute  and  holy  will  of  God.  Voluntas 
Dei,  —  that  is  the  goal  and  significance  of  the  truly  re- 
ligious life.     It  is  apt  to  be  a  solitary  experience, 

"I  the  alone  fly  to  the  Alone." 
as  one  Mystic  ^  said. 

1  H.  C.  Warren,  ''Buddhism  in  Translation,"  pp.  339,  390,  391. 

2  Plotinus. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE ITS   FORMS  343 

Says  Molinos/  ^'  Happy  is  the  state  of  the  soul  which  has 
slain  and  annihilated  itself,  for  then  it  is  filled  with  the 
mystical  grace  and  ^ sinks ^  and  doses'  itself  in  the  im- 
measurable sea  of  God's  infinite  goodness  and  rests  there 
steadfast  and  immovable." 

Here  is  an  illustration  from  the  ^'Scholastic  Mysti- 
cism'' of  Albert  Magnus:  to  worship  God  in  spirit 
means  'Hhe  mind  must  be  cleared  of  all  sense  images"  — 
'^  Nothing  pleases  God  more  than  a  mind  free  from  all 
occupations  and  distractions  .  .  .  such  a  mind  is  in  a 
manner  transformed  into  God." 

For  the  great  speculative  mystic  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
Eckhart,  ''The  soul  of  man  is  at  peace  when  it  has  emanci- 
pated itself  from  the  phenomenal  world  and  returned  to  its 
source — to  'the  eternal  Ground,'  the  'stille  Wiiste,'  'the 
unity  where  no  man  dwelleth.'  Then  it  is  satisfied  in  the 
light ;  then  it  is  one ;  it  is  one  in  itself,  as  this  Ground  is 
a  simple  stillness,  and  in  itself  immovable." 

Like  the  doctrine  of  the  static  in  religion,  this  experi- 
ence tends  to  emphasize  submission  to  things  as  they  are ; 
the  acceptance  of  fate.  It  is  an  attitude  either  Stoical 
in  its  endurance,  or  renunciative,  as  in  a  religion  of  sorrow 
and  atonement.  In  this  respect  the  Mystic  of  any  age 
is  spokesman  for  a  universal  mystical  experience.  In  St. 
John  of  the  Cross  we  find:  "One  desire  only  doth  God 
allow  —  that  of  obeying  Him  and  carrying  the  cross." 
"When  thou  dwellest  upon  anything,  thou  hast  ceased 
to  cast  thyself  upon  the  All." 

Philosophy,  too,  on  the  whole  has  tended  in  the  direc- 
tion of  the  One.  We  meet  it  in  the  Vedanta  philosophy ; 
in  the  great  systems  of  Plato  and  Aristotle ;  in  Plotinus ; 
in  Spinoza  and  Leibnitz;  and  in  the  modern  absolute 
idealists. 

The  Many  and  their  Need. — Yet  to-day,  both  in  religion 
and  philosophy,  we  find  a  reaction  in  the  other  direction. 

1  Miguel  de  Molinos.  This  and  the  following  quotations  are  from 
Inge's  "Christian  Mysticism." 


344  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

No  longer  does  the  religious  individual  think  of  saving 
his  own  soul.     No  longer  does  he  sing  the  song  of  the 

cloister :  — 

"O  sola  beatitudo 
0  beata  solitudo." 

Or  pray  as  Thomas  a  Kempis :  — 

"  My  Son,  thou  must  give  all  for  all,  and  be  nothing  of  thine  own. 
...  It  is  wonderful  that  thou  committest  not  thyself  to  Me  from 
the  very  bottom  of  thy  heart,  with  all  things  which  thou  canst  desire 
or  have. 

"Why  art  thou  consumed  with  vain  sorrow?  Why  art  thou 
wearied  with  superfluous  cares?  Stand  thou  by  My  good  pleasure, 
and  thou  shalt  suffer  no  loss.  If  thou  seekest  after  this  or  that,  and 
wilt  be  here  or  there,  according  to  thine  own  advantage  or  the  ful- 
filling of  thine  own  pleasure,  thou  shalt  never  be  in  quiet,  nor  free  from 
care,  because  in  everything  somewhat  will  be  found  lacking,  and 
everywhere  there  will  be  somebody  who  opposeth  thee. 

"Therefore  it  is  not  the  gaining  or  multiplying  of  this  thing  or 
that  which  advantageth  thee,  but  rather  the  despising  it  and  cutting 
it  by  the  root  out  of  thy  heart ;  which  thou  must  not  only  understand 
of  money  and  riches,  but  of  the  desire  after  honour  and  vain  praise, 
things  which  all  pass  away  with  the  world." 

No  longer  to-day  does  the  individual  yearn  to  lose  him- 
self in  the  divine,  for  in  this  modern  age  a  new  note 
soimds,  the  note  of  democracy,  of  essential  equality  and 
universal  brotherhood ;  that  is,  an  emphasis  on  the  many. 
And  out  of  the  pity  and  horror  of  the  evil  in  the  present 
state  of  things,  there  has  arisen  the  new  attitude  of  war- 
fare against  the  ills  of  the  environment  and  of  generous 
practical  service  for  the  unfortunate  and  weak. 

Values,  too,  are  transformed.  It  is  the  Martha  rather 
than  the  Mary  ideal  which  is  extolled.  No  longer  are 
the  monk  and  the  priest  honored  as  the  superior  in- 
dividuals. This  honor  has  been  transferred,  rather,  to 
the  physician,  the  social  reformer  and  working  philan- 
thropist —  those  who  live  the  common  life  and  who  toil 
together  for  and  with  their  less  fortunate  brethren.  The 
world  scorns  those  who,  dreaming  of  '^the  ought  to  be," 
apparently  do  not  lift  a  hand  to  change  the  is.    The 


I 


I 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE ITS   FORMS  346 

young  men  of  lofty  purpose  of  our  day  do  not,  as  a  rule,  go 
into  the  profession  of  the  ministry ;  or,  if  they  do,  they 
severely  arraign  the  church  of  to-day  for  its  drowsiness 
and  selfishness  and  seek  to  transform  it  into  an  agency 
for  social,  economic,  and  legislative  reform.  The  best  of 
the  young  men  in  the  Church,  and  social  workers  out  of  it, 
who  proclaim  their  views  and  offer  resolutions  at  the 
various  denominational  conferences  are  on  fire  with  a  sense 
of  the  need  for  social  justice  and  the  abolition  of  those 
external  conditions  which  they  hold  are  the  '' causes  of 
poverty."  They  call  passionately  to  the  Church  if  it 
would  live,  to  come  out  from  its  seclusion  into  the  world 
of  men  and  to  busy  itself  with  human  affairs.  Not  for 
them  the  sorrowful,  ascetic  figure  bearing  the  cross  and 
crowned  with  the  crown  of  thorns  or  the  halo  of  early 
Christianity  and  of  the  paintings  of  the  old  masters.  Let 
us  get  back,  they  say,  to  the  life  and  message  of  the  his- 
toric Jesus.  In  the  ^'Man  of  Galilee"  we  find  a  simple, 
human  figure;  one  who  himself  went  about  doing  good, 
and  whose  message  concerned  the  coming  of  the  kingdom 
of  social  righteousness.  The  Church,  like  the  individual, 
must  repent. 

"Because  I  held  upon  my  selfish  road, 
And  left  my  brother  wounded  by  the  way, 
And  called  ambition  duty,  and  pressed  on, 
O  Lord,  I  do  repent. 

"Because  I  spent  the  strength  Thou  gavest  me 
In  struggle  which  Thou  never  didst  ordain, 
And  have  but  dregs  of  life  to  offer  Thee, 
0  Lord,  I  do  repent. 

"Because  Thou  hast  borne  with  me  all  this  while, 
Hast  smitten  me  with  love  until  I  weep, 
Hast  called  me  as  a  mother  calls  her  child, 
O  Lord,  I  do  repent." 

These  fiery  souls  make  the  individual  feel  as  if  the 
burden  of  the  wrongs  of  the  whole  world  were  on  his 


346  THE   DRAMA   OP  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

shoulders,  and  those  churches  which  have  always  con- 
cerned themselves  with  the  neighbor  feel,  perhaps,  some 
surprise  at  this  arraignment  —  yet  there  is  something  new 
in  this  appeal.  It  is  a  cry  for  social  justice  rather  than 
for  philanthropy,  and  one  needs  very  little  experience 
surely  to  see  the  need.  This  attitude  has  been  set  forth 
by  Henry  Van  Dyke  in  his  two  poems,  ^'The  Legend  of 
Felix"  and  ''The  Legend  of  Service,"  and  it  is  found  in 
many  another  modern  poem  and  hymn. 

"Leave  the  chanting  and  singing  and  telling  of  beads!  Whom 
dost  thou  worship  in  this  lonely  dark  corner  of  a  temple  with  doors 
all  shut?    Open  thine  eyes  and  see  thy  God  is  not  before  thee ! 

"He  is  there  where  the  tiller  is  tilling  the  hard  ground  and  where 
the  path-maker  is  breaking  stones. 

"Deliverance?    Where  is  deliverance  to  be  found? 

"Come  out  of  thy  meditations  and  leave  aside  thy  flowers  and 
incense !  What  harm  is  there  if  thy  clothes  are  tattered  and  stained? 
Meet  him  and  stand  by  him  in  toil  and  in  sweat  of  thy  brow." 

—  Rabindranath  Tagore. 

UNTO  THESE   LEAST 
By  Edward  Glenfaun  Spencer 

"I  knelt  one  day  within  a  lofty  fane, 
And,  voicing  all  my  heart  in  earnest  prayer, 
Half -listened  for  a  motion  in  the  air,  — 
The  rush  of  angel  pinions,  and  the  strain 
Of  mellow-voiced  trumpets  blown  amain 
By  artless  lips  grown  tuneful  o'er  my  share 
In  holy  ways.    Instead,  I  was  aware 
Of  one  who  searched  my  face  with  eyes  of  pain. 

"Clothed  as  he  were  a  village  artisan. 
And  in  his  hand  a  joiner's  rule  and  square  ; 
A  ragged,  crimson  furrow  marked  I  where 
A  thorny  wreath  uptore  the  quivering  flesh ; 
And,  as  I  gazed  upon  his  forehead  wan. 
Behold,  the  cruel  circlet  pierced  afresh ! 
'These  thorns  I  wear,  this  guiltless  blood  I  shed, 
0  Son  of  man,  so  long  as  God  is  shamed 
In  this  sad  brood,  his  offspring,  maimed 


I 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  347 

And  sapped  by  bootless  toil.    Upon  my  head, 

My  wounded  head  and  heart,  the  burthen  dread 

Of  this  world's  care  and  dole  —  its  wealth  misnamed, 

Its  want  unkenned,  its  virtue  unacclaimed  — 

Falls,  like  a  ravin'd  army's  ruthless  tread. 

With  plentitude  of  pain.    What  boots  it,  ye. 

To  roll  aloft  your  swelling  hymns  of  praise 

While  starvling  children  throng  my  altar  stairs? 

As  unto  these,  so  do  ye  unto  me. 

Nor  in  dim  aisles  are  found  the  eternal  ways. 

But  where  man  strives  and  faints  yet  onward  fares.'  " 

We  find  it  expressed  in  its  purest  general  form  per- 
haps in  Leigh  Hunt's  well-known  poem  of  ^'Abou  Ben 
Ahdem."  The  man  who  loved  his  fellow-man  was  the 
man  whoes  name  was  written  first  in  the  book  of  the  Lord. 
But,  of  course,  already  this  note  was  struck  in  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount  and  the  parables  of  Jesus.  ''If  ye  love  not 
your  brethren  whom  ye  have  seen,  how  can  ye  love  God 
whom  ye  have  not  seen?"  or  in  the  parables  of  the  ''Last 
Judgment"  and  the  "Good  Samaritan"  :  "Inasmuch  as 
ye  did  it  not  imto  one  of  the  least  of  these,  ye  did  it  not 
unto  me." 

How,  indeed,  shall  the  disciple  find  the  Master  while  he 
leaves  his  brother  to  perish  by  the  way? 

Once,  indeed,  the  Church  with  its  dogmas,  creeds,  and 
ritual  was  absolutely  authoritative,  and  religious  traditions, 
conventions,  and  superstitions  with  their  "thou  shalt"  and 
their  "thou  shalt  not"  dominated  men's  minds.  Then 
came  the  rebels  of  the  Romantic  Movement  of  the  later 
eighteenth  and  of  the  early  nineteenth  centuries;  the 
heroes  of  Byron  and  Shelley,  the  Faust  and  Prometheus 
of  Goethe,  and  later  on  Nietzsche  and  Ibsen,  and  their 
followers  in  England  and  Germany  to-day. 

The  whole  Romantic  Movement  is  mirrored  in  Goethe's 
Faust.  Faust  wants  to  know  all  experience  even  to  its 
depths  of  tragedy  and  evil. 

"Ich  fiihle  Muth,  mich  in  der  Welt  zu  wagen 
Der  Erde  Weh,  der  Erde  Gliick  zu  tragen,  .  .  .*' 


I 


348  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Faust  yearns  for  the  perfect  moment.     If  he  fails  to  win 
it  then  life  is  a  worthless  thing. 

"  Was  bin  ich  denn,  wenn  es  nicht  moglich  ist, 
Der  Menscheit  Krone  zu  eringen 
Nach  der  sich  alle  Sinne  dringen." 

Faust  calls  upon  magic  to  come  to  his  aid  —  magic, 
which  appears  to  mean  Faust's  own  romantic,  self- 
determining  will.^  Hence  Faust  is  driven  endlessly  from 
one  experience  to  another,  and  hence  his  pact  with 
Mephistopheles.  If  Faust  shall  say  to  the  flying  moment 
"Verweile  nicht!  du  bist  so  schon!'* 

Mephistopheles  wins  Faust's  soul.    This  modern  devil  is 
the  negating  spirit. 

"  Ich  bin  der  Greist  der  stets  vemeint 
Und  das  mit  Recht ;  denn  alles  was  entsteht 
Ist  werth  dass  es  zu  Grunde  geht." 

Faust  seeks  the  perfect,  yet  he  sees  actual  life  as  a 
dream,  a  longing  for  the  impossible,  a  "  tale  that  is  told  " 
without  significance  or  worth.  For  every  value  has  its 
negation.  Opposed  to  longings  and  ideals  are  death  and 
circumstance,  finitude  and  fate.  How  then  can  the  will 
of  man  attain  the  perfect  when  every  value  changes  ^  and 
crumbles  as  soon  as  experienced  ?  There  is  no  permanent 
value  in  any  finite  experience.  The  truth  at  last  to  Faust, 
always  a  Romanticist,  is  this,  that  the  process  of  seeking  and 
going  on  is  itseK  salvation  and  the  way  —  He  learns  that 

"  Whoever  strives  unweariedly 
Is  not  beyond  redeeming." 
"  Nur  der  verdient  sich  Freiheit  wie  das  Leben, 
Der  taglich  sie  erobem  muss." 

Byron's  Cain  is  another  example  of  the  spirit  of  the 
Romantic  Movement. 

1 "  The  Will  to  Power  "  ?  The  relation  of  the  Romantic  Movement 
to  the  Germany  of  the  present  hour  —  the  Germany  of  1914-1915  — 
is  an  interesting  one. 

'  See  quotation  from  Friedrich  Sohlegel,  p.  261. 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  349 

For  Cain  is  in  reality  a  rebel  against  man's  finitude. 
Enlightened  by  the  fruit  of  the  tree  of  the  knowledge  of 
good  and  evil,  Cain  can  no  longer  be  satisfied  with  the  good 
of  the  natural  life.  He  longs  for  the  lost  Paradise  and 
laments  because 

" 'Tis  but  a  dream, 
A  forbidden  place  of  joy." 

The  paradise  he  seeks  however  is  fundamentally  the 
realization  of  a  glorious  self-will.  But  all  finite  life  is 
incomplete.  Man  cannot  reach  the  goal  of  perfect  happi- 
ness. After  dreams  of  Eden  and  of  immortality,  he  re- 
turns to  the  common  lot  of  the  earthly  life  and  feels 
again  his  nothingness.  Before  him  flits  the  thought  of 
the  unknown  and  the  mysterious  —  death.  Cain  rebels 
against  a  universe  in  which  the  distinction  between  good 
and  evil  seems  to  rest  solely  on  the  omnipotent  will  of  an 
external  ruler  and  judge — a  universe  in  which  the  innocent 
suffer  for  and  with  the  guilty  and  in  which  death  limits  all. 

This  experience  is  not  unlike  that  of  Gotama,  but,  as  we 
have  seen.  Buddhism  turned  in  a  very  different  direction 
for  escape  from  misery  and  the  '^ wheel  of  existence."  Its 
doctrine  was  renunciation  rather  than  self-assertion.  It 
sought  to  overcome  the  personal  ego.  The  private  will 
is  the  evil  thing  —  desire  and  ignorance  its  roots.  But 
these  young  rebels  of  Romanticism,  abounding  in  life  and 
spirit,  feel  that  no  good  which  is  not  a  realization  of  their 
own  individual  selfhood  can  be  satisfying  in  the  end. 

A  similar  spirit  of  revolt  against  the  arbitrary  decrees 
of  an  external  power  runs  through  the  poetry  of  Shelley. 
Shelley's  own  life  was  a  passionate  protest  against  the  tyr- 
anny of  external  authority.  His  heroes  illustrate  various 
phases  of  this  revolt.  Prometheus  endures  intolerable 
suffering  because  he  has  dared  defy  the  tyrant  Jupiter. 
Prometheus  is  triumphant  in  the  end,  but  his  Paradise, 
like  all  exactly  described  paradises,  is  not  very  convincing 
as  an  ultimate  satisfaction  of  the  aspiring  human  spirit. 


350  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL    LIFE 

One  feels  that,  after  all,  the  real  consummation  for  Prome- 
theus is  expressed  in  the  final  words  of  Demagorgon:  — 

*'To  suffer  woes  which  Hope  thinks  infinite; 
To  forgive  wrongs  darker  than  death  or  night ; 

To  defy  Power,  which  seems  omnipotent ; 
To  love,  and  bear ;  to  hope  till  Hope  creates 
From  its  own  wreck  the  thing  it  contemplates : 

Neither  to  change,  nor  falter,  nor  repent  ; 
This,  like  thy  glory.  Titan !  is  to  be 
Good,  great  and  joyous,  beautiful  and  free; 
This  is  alone  Life,  Joy,  Empire,  and  Victory ! " 

Prometheus,  like  Shelley,  remains  a  rebel  to  the  end. 

Cain  believes  in  absolute  resistance  and  defiance  of 
tyranny.  But  Cain's  rebellious  spirit  is  finally  overcome 
by  the  sight  of  death,  which  startles  him  into  a  realization 
of  his  own  sin. 

Starting  from  the  same  premises,  quite  different  is  the 
outcome  of  the  rebelUon  of  Nietzsche's  ^^Zarathustra." 
Zarathustra  scorns  the  ^'  good  men. ' '  He  breaks  in  pieces 
the  tables  of  value  which  extol  the  passive  (Christian) 
virtues.  But  out  of  the  wreck  of  his  own  scorn  and  de- 
fiance, he  creates  new  values  —  the  ideal  of  the  ^^  super- 
man" and  the  '^will  to  power." 

Nietzsche's  Superman,  —  '^What  is  great  in  man  at 
present  is  that  he  is  a  *  transition'  and  a  ^destruction.' 
He  is  that  which  must  be  surpassed.  Zarathustra  comes 
to  teach  men  ' beyond  men.'  The  noble,  the  self-assertive, 
those  who  have  courage  to  follow  their  star  whithersoever 
it  may  lead,  they  are  the  creators  of  new  values.  Ay,  for 
the  play  of  creating,  my  brethren,  a  holy  asserting  is 
wanted ;  it  is  its  own  will  that  the  spirit  now  willeth.  It 
is  its  own  world  that  the  recluse  winneth  for  himself. 
Not  to  accept  the  traditions  of  the  past  because  they  are 
old  and  once  had  value ;  to  take  to  one's  self  the  right  to 
new  values  —  that  is  the  most  terrible  taking  for  a  spirit 
able  to  bear  the  load  and  reverent.  To  create  for  one's 
self  freedom  and  a  holy  way  even  towards  duty ;  there- 
fore, my  brethren,  the  lion  is  required." 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  351 

Yes,  for  the  ^'beyond  man^'  one  may  even  be  self-sacri- 
ficing. 

"  I  love  the  great  despisers  because  they  are  the  great  adorers. 
They  are  arrows  of  longing  for  the  other  shore.  I  love  those  who  do 
not  seek  behind  the  stars  for  a  reason  to  perish  and  be  sacrificed,  but 
who  sacrifice  themselves  to  earth  in  order  that  earth  may  some  day 
become  beyond-man's.  .  .  .  Canst  thou  give  thyself  thine  evil  and 
thine  good,  hanging  thy  will  above  thee  as  a  law?  Canst  thou  be 
thine  own  judge  and  the  avenger  of  thine  own  law  ?  Terrible  it  is  to 
be  alone  with  the  judge  and  avenger  of  one's  own  law  —  Thus  a  star 
is  cast  out  into  the  void  and  into  the  icy  breath  of  solitude. 

"  Beware  of  the  good  and  just !  They  would  fain  crucify  those  who 
invent  their  own  standard  of  virtue  —  they  hate  the  lonely  one."  * 

Then  there  is  that  other  group  of  rebels  who  belong 
especially  to  our  own  day  and  generation  —  I  mean  the 
group  of  women  who  appear  in  the  pages  of  Ibsen  and 
Sudermann  and  in  the  playwrights  and  noveUsts,  the 
followers  of  Ibsen,  in  England. 

These  women  are  rebels  against  the  laws  and  conven- 
tions of  society.  The  law  of  society  for  women  has  al- 
ways been  the  law  of  self-sacrificing  and  patient  submis- 
sion to  further  the  ends  of  others,  but  these  heroines  of 
modern  fiction  and  drama  long  to  be  free  to  follow  their 
own  will.  Like  Sudermann's  Magda,  they  declare  they 
have  their  own  Ufe  to  live  and  that  nothing  shall  hamper 
them.  Or  like  Hedda  Gabler  they  seek  a  '^  career," 
for  which  they  are  ready  to  sacrifice  all  the  sacred  tradi- 
tions and  precious  associations  of  the  past ;  or,  like  Nora 
Helmer,  who,  awakening  from  a  fooFs  paradise,  is  unable 
to  remain  in  the  house  where  she  is  treated  as  a  pet  play- 
thing. 

"Nora:  I  think  that  before  all  else  I  am  a  human  being  just  as 
much  as  you  are  —  or  at  least  I  will  try  to  become  one.  I  know  that 
most  people  agree  with  you,  Torwald,  and  that  they  say  so  in  books. 
But  henceforth  I  cannot  be  satisfied  with  what  most  people  say,  and 
what  is  in  books.  I  must  think  things  out  for  myself  and  try  to  get 
clear  about  them."  ^ 

1  Fr.  Nietzsche,  "Thus  Spake  Zarathustra." 
« H.  Ibsen,  "A  DoU's  House,"  Act  III. 


352  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Or,  like  a  Rebecca  West,  the  mysterious  heroine  of  '^Ros- 
mersholm,"  so  radical  and  rebellious  in  theory,  who  is  so 
eager  to  be  a  leader  in  the  movement  for  emancipation,  yet 
when  it  comes  to  action,  is  held,  equally  with  John  Rosmer, 
in  thrall  to  the  heritage  of  the  race  —  ''its  doubts,  its 
agonies,  its  scruples''  even  to  its  superstitions. 

And  what  does  it  all  mean  —  this  Prometheus-like  de- 
fiance of  the  past,  this  cry  for  freedom  ?  In  all  these  rebels 
what  we  find  is,  is  it  not,  at  bottom,  the  longing  to  be  truly 
themselves;  to  express  and  create,  so  far  as  they  may, 
their  own  ideals;  not  to  have  their  individuality  sup- 
pressed ;  not  to  follow  the  alien  ideals  of  others  ?  That 
is,  it  is  first  an  assertion  of  one  of  the  deepest  of  human 
impulses  —  the  creative.  ''To  create  new  values  for  one's 
self  —  that  is  the  greatest  of  all  creating,"  as  Zarathustra 
said.  And  in  the  second  place,  it  is  the  more  self-con- 
scious assertion  essential  to  the  truly  ethical  life  —  that 
they  too  are  persons  unique  and  individual. 

In  all  these  instances,  the  individual  is  confronted  with 
his  world.  We  have  before  us  the  old,  old  problem  of  the 
self-assertive  as  opposed  to  the  self-renouncing  self.  It  is, 
in  a  word,  essentially  a  moral  problem.  There  is  a  Christian 
hymn  which  runs:  "O  to  be  nothing,  nothing,"  and  in 
Buddhism  and  mysticism  we  have  followed  the  loss  of  in- 
dividuality in  the  blissful  unconsciousness  of  Nirvana ;  or 
as  it  is  absorbed  in  a  sea  of  being — the  one — of  Pagan  and 
Christian  mysticism.  The  emphasis  on  The  All  and  The 
One  tends  to  crush  out  freedom  and  spontaneous,  creative 
life;  that  is,  to  rob  the  finite  human  life  of  all  value. 
Modern  individualism  over  against  this  emphasizes  the 
will  to  power,  individual  freedom,  assertiveness,  and  "  la 
joie  de  vivre.^^ 

So  much  for  the  rebellious  individuals  with  their  em- 
phasis on  diversity  and  uniqueness  and  the  self-assertive 
will.  Our  age  is  still  considered  an  individualistic  one, 
and  in  the  woman-movement,  which  is  essentially  the 
movement  for  greater  self-expression  and  recognition  of 


THE   WAY  OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  353 

personality;  in  the  labor  movement,  which  strives  for 
greater  opportunity  and  a  greater  share  in  the  fruits  of 
production,  and  in  the  political  unrest  in  Asiatic  nations, 
individualism  is  still  active,  indeed  often  anarchistic. 
Yet  much  that  we  call  individualism  is,  after  all,  perhaps, 
only  the  unrest  and  maladjustment  between  the  newer 
ideals  of  the  individual  and  the  old  ideals  of  society  at 
large.  There  is  self-assertion  in  relation  to  these  newer 
ideals  over  against  the  felt  tyranny  of  the  old,  but  not 
less  of  loyalty  to  them.  And  in  spite  of  all,  somehow 
it  seems  to  me  the  world  has  begun  to  swing  again  to- 
wards a  kind  of  unity.  One  observes  this  in  the  tendency 
everywhere  to  organize  and  form  groups  whether  for  work 
or  amusement.  For  instance,  in  the  centralization  and 
trend  towards  paternalism  of  government  as  well  as  in 
the  federation  of  churches;  in  cooperative  movements 
in  the  industrial  world,  in  socialism,  in  certain  educa- 
tional tendencies,  and  the  attempt  on  the  part  of  the 
state  to  interfere  with  the  more  private  concerns  of  in- 
dividuals ;  in  the  work  for  ^'the  common  welfare'^  through 
conservation  of  natural  resources,  and  especially  the 
hmnan,  and  through  the  unprovement  of  the  environ- 
ment,— which  latter  tendency  appears  to  be  the  modern 
ideal  par  excellence.  This  whole  movement  leads  to  a 
general  levelling  of  society  and  away  from  individual 
uniqueness.  It  has  been  said  even  of  our  day  that  the 
passion  for  liberty  which  animated  the  undertakings  of 
our  fathers,  is  dying  out,  and  that  men  are  content  to  let 
themselves  be  governed  by  a  tyrannical  group  and  by  the 
majority  vote. 

Religion,  to  be  sure,  no  longer  holds  its  authorita- 
tive sway  over  the  more  thoughtful  minds,  but,  in  its 
place,  a  new  authority  has  arisen,  namely,  the  authority 
of  what  one  may  call  the  social-scientific  consciousness. 
To-day,  we  must  be  scientific  if  nothing  else,  and  we 
must  be  socially  organized.  The  scientific  and  the  re- 
ligious spirit  have  generally  been  in  conflict.  ^^The 
2a 


354  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

fact,"  ^  said  Nietzsche,  ^Hhat  science  has  become  as  sov- 
ereign as  it  is  to-day,  proves  how  the  nineteenth  century- 
has  emancipated  itself  from  the  dominion  of  ideals.  .  .  . 
The  nineteenth  century  instinctively  goes  in  search  of 
theories  by  means  of  which  it  may  feel  its  fatalistic  sub- 
mission to  the  empire  of  facts  justified."  The  theory  runs 
as  follows  :  ^^The  success  of  determinism,  the  genealogical 
derivation  of  obligations  which  were  formerly  held  to  be 
absolute,  the  teaching  of  environment  and  adaptation, 
the  reduction  of  will  to  a  process  of  reflex  movement,  the 
denial  of  the  will  as  *a  working  cause.'  Naturalism,  the 
elimination  of  the  choosing,  directing,  interpreting  subject 
on  principle." 

The  Social-Scientific  Consciousness.  —  Nurtured  by  the 
scientific  spirit  of  the  age,  this  newly  awakened  con- 
sciousness seeks  to  promote  the  community  welfare 
through  making  authoritative  the  social  whole.^  By 
scientific  methods  of  experimentation,  it  aims  to  create  by 
external  means  human  beings  who  shall  be  as  efficient  as 
machines  and  as  mathematically  dependable  in  their  ac- 
tivities as  the  laws  of  nature  and  who,  presumably,  will 
reach  a  high  level  of  happiness  in  correlation  with  their 
high  efficiency  and  good  environment. 

The  Need  of  the  Recognition  of  the  Personal  Element, — It 
is  a  rather  curious  fact,  I  think,  that  the  modern  attitude 
of  social  sympathy  and  social  activity  which  must  have 
taken  its  rise  from  interest  in  some  individual  case  similar 
to  that  in  the  tale  of  some  neglected  boy  in  a  great  city, 
such  as  Dickens  recounts ;  from  the  case  of  some  unhappy 
mother  in  the  slums  watching  the  frail  life  of  her  baby 
fade  before  her  eyes  in  spite  of  her  utmost  self-sacrifice ; 
or  from  the  story  such  as  the  pages  of  a  Tolstoy  make  real 
to  us  of  some  young  man  or  woman  of  good  natural  im- 
pulses goaded  on  to  sin  and  crime  by  the  injustice  of  their 
social  milieu  — this  attitude  has  in  its  outcome,  in  its 

1  Fr.  Nietzsche,  "The  Will  to  Power." 

2  Is  this  perhaps  the  Grerman  ideal  to-day  ? 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  355 

programme  for  social-economic  reform,  in  its  eager  work 
for  humanity  as  a  whole,  almost  lost  sight  of  the  individual 
himself.  It  is  so  easy  to  see  in  humanity  the  divine,  so 
hard,  in  some  particularly  irritating  individual.  Thus 
men  and  women  busy  over  eugenics  and  child-labor  laws 
have  sometimes  no  understanding  whatever  of  the  lonely 
child  in  their  own  homes ;  and  in  the  midst  of  all  the  toil 
and  stress  for  better  inspection  laws,  for  a  minimum  wage, 
for  the  doing  away  through  legislation  of  slums,  disease, 
and  poverty,  some  poet  soul  lives  forlorn  with  no  one  to 
speak  the  little  word  of  appreciation  which  would  make 
all  the  difference  in  his  power  to  work,^  or  some  man  or 
woman  struggling  for  light  and  strength  to  meet  some 
difficult  problem  in  his  or  her  life,  perhaps  even  already 
going  down  before  some  terrible  temptation,  finds  no 
outstretched  helping  hand,  no  loving  wisdom  to  guide  him 
or  her  to  the  better  self  .^ 

An  illustration  of  what  I  mean  is  given  in  the  novel 
of  Thomas  Hardy,  from  which  I  quoted  in  our  open- 
ing chapter.  The  hero,  who  belongs  to  the  laboring 
class,  has  had  from  boyhood  a  passion  for  learning.  To 
go  to  college  in  the  neighboring  city  of  Christminster 
is  the  dream  of  his  life.  He  sets  himself  to  work 
alone  and  studies  persistently  for  years  in  the  even- 
ings after  his  day's  work  to  prepare  himself  to  enter 
college.  But  when,  at  length,  he  gets  to  Christminster, 
he  finds  all  doors  closed.  Wholly  ignorant  of  ways  and 
means,  in  such  a  place,  he  knows  not  where  to  turn 
for  help,  but  finally  with  some  hesitation,  he  decides 
to  write  to  the  heads  of  four  different  colleges,  whom 
he  has  observed  and  picked  out  as  men  likely  to  be 
sympathetic  and  appreciative.  He  waits  for  a  long 
time  for  his  letters.  Finally,  one  of  the  Heads  deigns 
to  reply.      He  advises  the  young  man  to  give  up  his 

1  The  recent  Life  of  Fr.  Nietzsche  makes  us  familiar  anew  with 
the  frightful  loneliness  of  an  unappreciated  literary  genius. 

2  Illustrations  of  lonely  youth  in  the  books  of  Jane  Addams. 


356  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

ambition  and  remain  in  the  sphere  into  which  he  was  born, 
if  he  wants  to  succeed  in  Hfe. 

*'He  saw  what  a  curious  and  cunning  glamour  the  neighborhood  of 
the  place  had  exercised  over  him.  To  get  there  and  live  there,  to 
move  among  the  churches  and  halls  and  become  imbued  with  the 
genius  loci,  had  seemed  to  him  from  its  halo  on  the  horizon,  the  obvious 
and  ideal  thing  to  do.  'Let  me  only  get  there,'  he  had  said  with  the 
fatuousness  of  Crusoe  over  his  big  boat,  'and  the  rest  is  but  a  matter 
of  time  and  energy.'  It  would  have  been  far  better  for  him  in  every 
way  if  he  had  gone  to  some  busy  commercial  town  with  the  sole  object 
of  making  money  by  his  wits,  and  thence  surveyed  his  plan  in  true 
perspective.  Well,  all  that  was  clear  to  him  amounted  to  this,  that 
the  whole  scheme  had  burst  up,  like  an  iridescent  soap-bubble,  under 
the  touch  of  a  reasoned  inquiry.  He  looked  back  at  himself  along  the 
vista  of  his  past  years,  and  his  thought  was  akin  to  Heine's :  — 
"Above  the  youth's  inspired  and  flashing  eyes 
I  see  the  motley  mocking  fool's-cap  rise." 

"He  always  remembered  the  appearance  of  the  afternoon  on  which 
he  awoke  from  his  dream.  Not  quite  knowing  what  to  do  with  him- 
self, he  went  up  to  an  octagonal  chamber  in  the  lantern  of  a  singularly- 
built  theatre  that  was  set  amidst  this  quaint  and  singular  city.  It  had 
windows  all  round,  from  which  an  outlook  over  the  whole  town  and 
its  edifices  could  be  gained.  Jude's  eyes  swept  all  the  views  in  suc- 
cession, meditatively,  mournfully,  yet  sturdily.  Those  buildings  and 
their  associations  and  privileges  were  not  for  him.  From  the  roof  of 
the  great  library,  into  which  he  hardly  ever  had  time  to  enter,  his 
gaze  travelled  on  to  the  varied  spires,  halls,  gables,  streets,  chapels, 
gardens,  quadrangles,  which  composed  the  ensemble  of  this  unrivalled 
panorama.  He  saw  that  his  destiny  lay  not  with  these,  but  among 
the  manual  toilers  in  the  shabby  purlieu  which  he  himself  occupied, 
unrecognized  as  part  of  the  city  at  all  by  its  visitors  and  panegyrists, 
yet  without  whose  denizens  the  hard  readers  could  not  read  nor  the 
high  thinkers  live." 

And  on  a  large  scale,  in  industrial  life,  the  same  thing  is 
true.  The  employers  of  labor  in  mine  or  mill,  do  not,  as 
a  rule,  think  of  the  workers  as  human  beings  with  feelings, 
somewhat  at  least,  akin  to  their  own.  The  management 
of  a  mill  seems,  too  often,  to  look  upon  the  men  and  women 
as  mere  machines  out  of  whom  to  get  the  most  possible 
work  in  order  to  build  up  a  big  industry.     The  recent 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS  FORMS  357 

strike  at  Lawrence,  Massachusetts,  is  an  instance  of  the 
difference  of  attitude  on  the  part  of  the  labor  agitators. 
The  labor  agitator,  however  selfish  his  appeal,  treats  the 
operatives  as  men  and  women  with  passions  and  interests 
of  their  own.  But  to-day,  when  the  air  is  full  of  talk  of 
'^efficiency"  in  industrial  life,  it  is  seen  even  by  the  capi- 
talists that  some  account  must  be  taken  of  the  personal 
element  in  the  situation.  So  the  doctrine  of  efficiency  may 
come  to  our  aid  here,  even  if  its  end  is  actually  unrelated 
to  the  personal  or  ethical  problem.  Our  age  should,  first 
of  all,  pray  for  the  '^ understanding  heart."  For  what  we 
need  to-day,  I  think,  is  a  more  personal  attitude  in  our 
relation  to  others,  and  I  mean  by  that  a  greater  emphasis 
on  the  fact  of  the  individuality  and  personality  of  others  ; 
the  attitude  so  well  expressed  by  Emerson  in  his  poem 
"Friendship." 

"Me,  too,  thy  nobleness  has  taught 
To  master  my  despair 
The  fountains  of  my  hidden  life 
Are  through  thy  coming  fair.  " 

or  in  the  following  lines  of  Mrs.  WooUey :  — 

"Had  I  been  one  of  those 
Who  watched  their  sleeping  flocks  by  night 
And  saw  the  heavens,  joy-faint  with  light, 

Beneath  fair  Bethlehem's  rose  ; 
Would  I  have  known,  could  I  have  guessed, 
Would  I  have  followed  with  the  rest 

Upon  that  far  strange  quest? 

"And  had  I  been 
A  guest  in  that  small  crowded  inn 
Where  Mary  and  the  child  enstabled  lay. 
Would  I  adoring  too  have  knelt  to  pray? 

"And  had  I  heard 
The  hillside  preacher's  word  — 
'Come  unto  me,'  and  'Blessed  are  the  meek,' 
Would  I  have  guessed,  would  I  have  known 
This  was  the  One  we  came  to  seek, 
This  is  Messiah ;  He  alone? 


358  THE    DRAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

"Would  I  have  loved  upon  his  breast  to  lean, 
Or  coldly  asked  'Who  is  this  Nazarene?' 
In  wrath  for  Him  have  raised  the  sword  — 
Incarnate  God,  the  Spoken  Word  — 
Yet  thrice  denied  him  in  one  day. 
Mayhap  have  kissed  his  life  away? 

"Had  I  been  one  that  day 

To  stand  on  Calvary's  way. 

Would  I  have  joined  the  cry, 

'Away  with  Him,'  and  'Crucify'; 
And  helped  to  plait  the  crown  of  thorns. 
And  held  to  him  the  cup  of  gall. 
And  deemed  him  lost  whom  the  world  scorns, 
And  said  'This  is  the  last'  and  'This  is  all'? 

"How  easy  in  these  safe  and  pleasant  days 

To  worship  and  praise ! 
But  if  a  sleeping  babe  now  lay 
Within  a  manger  filled  with  hay. 
And  God's  star  pointed  out  the  way 

Would  I  believe?    Would  I  obey? 

"How  many  great  hearts  silently 
Seek  their  Gethsemane 
To  pray  and  weep. 
While  we,  forgetting,  sleep. 
For  Truth  is  mocked  and  scourged  alway, 
And  Love  is  crucified  each  day." 

Thus,  even,  in  the  midst  of  our  talk  of  social  service  and 
social  justice  and  all  our  bustle  and  eagerness  and  anxiety 
the  old  question  returns.  To  what  end  ?  When  we  have 
created  a  system  which  runs  with  the  exactness  and  per- 
fection of  a  machine  what  has  become  of  variety  and 
uniqueness,  of  quality,  of  individuality,  —  of  all,  in  short, 
that  makes  life  interesting  ?  Were  our  present-day  social 
Utopia  carried  out,  all  would  be  on  a  dead  level.  When 
we  are  a  people  well-fed  and  housed  and  free  from  disease, 
shall  we  at  the  same  time  have  furthered  in  our  midst  the 
life  of  the  spirit?  We  shall  be  more  efficient  workmen, 
perhaps, — that  is,  better  able  to  make  money;  we  shall 
be  better  athletes,  but  somehow,  I  am  afraid  the  hero,  the 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE ITS   FORMS  359 

appreciator,  the  friend,  the  poet,  the  worshipper  in  us  will 
be  dead.  In  spite  of  our  talk  of  social  justice  and  social 
welfare,  we  are  not  seeking  for  inspiration  from  the  foun- 
tain of  living  waters.  If  even  the  Church,  in  answer  to  the 
present  demand,  is  to  lose  itself  in  social  work,  who  will  hold 
aloft  the  ideals  of  the  unseen  world  or  care  for  man's  need 
of  discipline  and  inspiration  ?  ^  I  am  afraid  all  our  social 
efforts  are  leading  us  onl}''  further  into  materialism  and 
commercialism  instead  of  to  idealism  and  true  spirituality. 

The  Outcome  of  "Herd  Morality," — For  Naturalism  and 
Paganism  are  the  deadly  foes  in  our  midst,  and  what  shall 
redeem  us  ?  Our  restlessness,  as  we  saw  in  the  last  chapter, 
betrays  our  discontent,  and  while  the  best  among  us  work 
for  external  means  to  social  betterment,  others  less  worthy 
of  aim  throw  themselves  into  the  maelstrom  of  excitement 
and  sensationalism,  in  all  their  various  forms,  and  at  last  are 
overcome  by  world-weariness  and  pessimism,  and  the  end 
is  the  desperate  all  ''In  Vain"  of  Nietzsche.  The  follow- 
ing is  Nietzsche's  severe  arraignment  of  the  social  values 
of  what  he  calls  ''herd  morality."  "The  highest  values 
in  the  service  of  which  man  ought  to'  hve,  more  particu- 
larly when  they  are  oppressed  and  constrained  the  most, 
—  these  social  values,  owing  to  their  tone-strengthening 
tendencies,  were  built  over  men's  heads  as  though  they 
were  the  will  of  God  or  'reality'  or  the  actual  world,  or 
even  a  hope  of  the  world  to  come.  Now  that  the  lowly 
origin  of  these  values  has  become  known,  the  whole  uni- 
verse seems  to  have  become  trans-valued  and  to  have  lost 
its  significance."  ^  This  leads  to  nihilism — that  is,  a  dis- 
belief in  all  values.     Pessimism  is  an  intermediate  stage. 

Now,  as  we  have  already  seen,  the  emphasis  on  the 
social  experience  easily  tends  to  the  external  and  mechan- 

1  This  same  tendency  is  at  work  in  the  educational  field.  For 
Instance,  the  attempt  to  transform  Froebel's  Kindergarten  into  a 
place  of  free  play,  industrial  occupation,  and  social  intercourse.  What 
a  misunderstanding  of  Froebel's  principle  of  "self-activity"  do  we 
here  behold ! 

2  "Will  to  Power,"  p.  10. 


360  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

ical,  and  yet  the  conscious  goal  of  the  modern  social  move- 
ment is  not  an  external  and  mechanical  one.  It  is  in  part 
brotherhood,  but  not  even  merely  brotherhood.  It  is  in 
part  an  emphasis  on  the  enhancement  of  life,  that  is,  on  a 
value  which  is  aesthetic  and  individual  as  well  as  social. 
This  goal  of  abundant  life,  however,  is  not  the  goal  of  life 
emphasized  by  Christianity.^ 

For  this  ideal  is  not  expressed  in  terms  of  *'  the  cross  of 
Christ,"  or  of  the  unseen  world.  It  seems  to  have  no 
place  for  sorrow,  suffering,  and  such  evils  as  are  not  up- 
rooted by  the  fighting  spirit  alone.  It  is,  in  a  word,  a 
neo-Pagan  ideal  of  happiness  and  well-being  which  would 
not  admit  the  necessity  and,  indeed,  inevitability  of  a  tragic 
element  in  existence  or  the  need  of  renunciation  of  in- 
compatible desires  and  ends  and  the  acceptance  of  neces- 
sary limitations.  It  is  an  ideal  which  does  not  feel  the 
need  of  the  unseen  goal,  and  the  value  beyond  the  here 
and  now  of  this  life.  This  is  what  I  mean  by  the  present- 
day  tendency  to  neo-Paganism.  It  is  not  a  religious 
attitude.^ 

Shall  we  not,  I  wonder,  in  the  coming  age,  behold  a 
new  type  of  rebel? 

The  protest  and  rebellion  of  the  new  day  will  come,  I 
believe,  not  from  the  rebels  against  established  religion,  but 
from  the  religious  idealists,  and  from  the  lovers  and  crea- 
tors of  beauty, — the  artists  and  poets, — for  it  is  these  who 
to-day  suffer  under  the  weight  of  the  authority  of  scien- 
tific-materialism and  of  social,  practical  life. 

The  artist  works  alone  and  grows  discouraged  through 
lack  of  appreciation ;  the  dreamer  is  crushed  by  the  crit- 
icism of  his  practical  friend.    They  criticise  him  because 

»  St.  John,  Chapter  10 :  10. 

2  In  a  recent  work  on  religion  (William  Ernest  Hocking,  "The 
Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experience")  I  find  these  words:  "No 
historic  religion  has  pretended  to  recommend  itself  to  men  solely  on 
the  ground  of  its  value  for  the  present  life  and  social  order.  They 
insist  rather  on  the  comparative  worthlessness  of  these  goods.  Their 
treasures  are  elsewhere." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  361 

he  cannot  mend  a  chair  or  cook  a  pudding ;  he  does  not 
criticise  them  because  they  cannot  read  a  poem  with 
expression,  or  see  the  beauty  in  cloud  shadows.  It  is  the 
most  sensitive  and  appreciative  of  spirits,  and  above  all 
poet-souls  who  are  most  overwhelmed  by  the  tragic  con- 
tradictions, the  commercialism,  materialism  and  worldli- 
ness  of  the  life  of  our  day. 

''Oh  sorrowful,  great  gift  conferred  on  poets  of  a  twofold  life 
When  one  life  has  been  found  enough  for  pain."  * 

For  an  instance  of  this  sense  of  discoordination  in  modern 
life,  we  may  turn  to  A.  C.  Benson's  ^*  Beside  Still  Waters," 
or  again  to  the  following  poem :  — 

"On  a  time,  not  of  old, 
When  a  poet  had  sent  out  his  soul,  and  no  welcome  had  found 
Where  the  heart  of  the  nation  in  prose  stood  fettered  and  bound 

In  fold  upon  fold  — 
He  called  back  his  soul  who  had  pined  for  some  answer  afloat ; 
And  thus  in  the  silence  of  night  and  the  pride  of  his  spirit  he  wrote : 

"'Come  back,  poet- thought ! 
For  they  honor  thee  not  in  thy  vesture  of  verse  and  of  song. 
Come  back  —  thou  hast  hovered  about  in  the  markets  too  long. 

In  vain  thou  hast  sought 
To  stem  the  strong  current  that  swells  from  the  philistine  lands ; 
Thou  hast  failed  to  deliver  the  message  the  practical  public  demands. 

"  'Come  back  to  the  heights 
Of  thy  vision,  thy  love,  thy  Parnassus  of  beauty  and  truth  — 
From  the  valleys  below  where  the  labor  of  age  and  of  youth 

Has  no  need  of  thy  lights ;  — 
For  Science  has  marshalled  the  way  with  a  lamp  of  its  own. 
Till  they  woo  thee  with  wakening  love,  thou  must  follow  thy  pathway 
alone.' 

"We  have  striven,  have  toiled  — 
Have  pressed  with  the  foremost  to  sing  to  the  men  of  our  time 
The  thought  that  was  deepest,  the  lay  that  was  lightest  in  rhyme. 

We  are  baffled  and  foiled. 
The  crowd  hurries  on,  intent  upon  traffic  and  pay. 
They  have  ears,  but  they  hear  not.    What  chance  to  be  heard  haa 
the  poet  to-day? 

*  Aurora  Leigh. 


362  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

"So  we  turn  from  the  crowd, 
And  we  sing  as  we  please  —  like  the  thrush  far  away  in  the  woods ; 
They  may  listen  or  not,  as  they  choose,  to  our  fancies  and  moods 

Chanted  low,  chanted  loud 
In  the  sunshine  or  storm  —  'mid  the  hearts  that  are  tender  or  hard. 
What  need  of  applause  from  the  world  when  art  is  its  own  reward?  " 

—  Christopher  P.  Cranch. 

Sometimes  we  hear  of  lonely  youth  overcome  by  the 
contradictions  of  his  own  nature, — by  the  conflict  of  his 
socially  trained  instincts  with  his  own  self-conscious  ideal, 
or  the  conflict  between  the  demands  of  society  which  re- 
quires submission  and  adjustment  to  its  own  standards 
and  his  own  inner  vision  of  new  values  of  a  more  sesthetic 
type  —  who,  in  despair,  seeks  escape  in  suicide,  for  there 
has  been  none  to  appreciate  and  help  him. 

More  than  food  and  raiment,  more  than  comfortable 
houses,  opportunities  for  recreation,  etc.  —  much  as  the 
world  needs  these  things  —  does  man  need  the  crucible 
of  oil,  the  alabaster  box  of  precious  ointment,  even  the 
flower  laid  upon  the  grave,  which,  it  is  true,  could  be  sold 
for  much  pence  and  given  to  the  poor  —  the  little  word  of 
belief  and  encouragement  and  appreciation  which  shall 
lead  him  to  rely  upon  himself  and  to  become  a  person. 

"If  thou  by  fortune  be  bereft 
And  in  thy  store  there  be  but  left 
Two  loaves,  sell  one  and  with  the  dole 
Buy  hyacinths  to  feed  thy  soul." 

Beautifully  has  one  of  our  own  poets  expressed  this  ap- 
preciative attitude :  — 

"Sing,  for  the  others!  Sing;  to  some  pale  cheek 
Against  the  window,  like  a  starving  flower. 
Loose,  with  your  singing,  one  poor  pilgrim  hour 
Of  journey,  with  some  Heart's  Desire  to  seek. 

Loose,  with  your  singing,  captives  such  as  these 
In  misery  and  iron,  hearts  too  meek ; 

For  voyage  —  voyage  over  dreamful  seas 
To  lost  Hesperides. 


THE   WAY   OF  LIFE  —  ITS  FORMS  863 

"Sing  not  for  free-men.    Ah,  but  sing  for  whom 

The  walls  shut  in ;  and  even  as  eyes  that  fade 
The  windows  take  no  heed  of  light  nor  shade,  — 
The  leaves  are  lost  in  mutterings  of  the  loom. 
Sing  near !    So  in  that  golden  overflowing 
They  may  forget  their  wasted  human  bloom ; 

Pay  the  devouring  days  their  all,  unknowing,  — 
Reck  not  of  life's  bright  going ! " 

We  need  to  win  the  appreciative  attitude.  We  need 
first,  for  our  own  redemption,  a  keener  realization  of  the 
unseen  and  spiritual  realities ;  and,  secondly,  we  need 
more  appreciation  of  that  type  of  harmony  and  wholeness 
which  embodied  beauty  gives. 

The  Redeeming  Forces.  —  The  spirit  of  beauty  and  the 
spirit  of  a  religion  which  holds  to  the  unseen  and  gives  it  a 
personal  interpretation  shall  be  our  redeemers  from  scien- 
tific-naturalism and  paganism.  If  few  and  far  between, 
there  are  yet  signs  visible  on  the  horizon  of  a  trend  in  this 
direction.  We  find  these  signs  where  in  practical  America 
we  should  naturally  expect  first  to  find  them  —  in  those 
forms  of  activity  and  of  art  which  are  nearest  to  utilitarian 
values.  For  instance,  in  the  movement  for  city  planning 
there  are  signs  that  the  spirit  of  beauty  which  means  an 
harmonious  whole  of  a  variety  of  parts  is  awakening,  and 
with  it  a  new  ci\dc  spirit.  This  aesthetic  tendency  is  also 
to  be  seen  in  some  phases  of  the  play  movement.  For 
instance,  in  the  rhythmic  movement  of  the  folk  dances; 
in  pageants  with  their  ensemble  of  beauty  and  of  stimulus 
to  the  community  spirit ;  in  the  creative  activity  which 
some  of  the  games  encourage,  and  in  the  inspiration  in  this 
direction  which  dramatic  work  in  the  best  literature  can 
give.  Again,  in  the  delight  in  out-of-door  life,  in  the 
genuine  love  of  nature,  here  and  there;  in  the  aesthetic 
appreciation  and  creative  ability  which  our  foreign  fellow- 
citizens  may  bring  to  practical,  money-getting  America, 
there  is  occasion  for  hope. 

In  religion  the  old  forms  and  impossible  beliefs  are  fast 
passing  away  or  finding  their  true  place  as  "  scaffoldings,  *' 


364  THE   DKAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

as  poetry,  and  symbols.  Yet,  as  James  has  said,  ''Man  is 
incurably  religious/^  And,  even  now,  it  is  claimed  that 
he  is  more  inwardly  religious  than  formerly,  when  out- 
wardly he  appears  to  be  less  so.  Also,  it  is  said,  by  those 
who  should  speak  with  authority,  that  in  spite  of  the  evi- 
dence of  neo-realism  amongst  our  younger  philosophers 
there  is  awakening  an  interest  in  philosophic  idealism. 

But  the  idea  of  the  city  beautiful,  for  instance,  as  so 
much  brick  and  mortar  (or  marble,  with  parks,  foim- 
tains,  etc.)  will  not  help  us  very  much  unless  we  idealize 
and  personalize  it.^ 

And  still  more  is  this  true  of  religion.  That  is,  it  is 
doubtful  if  a  religion  which  had  become  merely  ethics, 
with  its  emphasis  on  impersonal  law  even  if  ethics  of  the 
highest  order,  could  long  hold  the  majority  of  men.  Hence 
emerges  the  importance,  for  religious  experience,  of  the 
concept  of  personality. 

The  appreciative  attitude  referred  to  above  is  that  at- 
titude which  recognizes  that  personality  is  the  essential 
quality  of  human  life.  And  when  we  come  to  analyze 
personality,  we  shall  see  that  this  attitude  is  essentially  a 
religious  attitude. 

In  contemporary  philosophy  there  is  a  movement 
which  stands  for  personality,  its  spontaneity  and  freedom, 
and  for  the  dramatic  element  in  reality  as  opposed  to  the 

*  See  for  instance  Lowell's  "Commemoration  Ode  "  :  — 

"  O  Beautiful !  my  Country !  ours  once  more  I 
Smoothing  thy  gold  of  war-dishevelled  hair 
O'er  such  sweet  brows  as  never  other  wore, 

And  letting  thy  set  lips, 

Freed  from  wrath's  pale  eclipse, 
Thy  rosy  edges  of  their  smile  lay  bare. 
What  words  divine  of  lover  or  of  poet 
Could  tell  our  love  and  make  thee  know  it. 
Among  the  Nations  bright  beyond  compare  ? 

What  were  our  lives  without  thee? 

What  all  our  lives  to  save  thee  ? 

We  will  not  dare  to  doubt  thee, 
But  ask  whatever  else,  and  we  will  dare  I " 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE ITS   FORMS  365 

intellectualism  and  determinism  of  the  scientific  inter- 
pretation of  things.  I  refer  to  the  movement  variously 
called  Pragmatism,  Meliorism,  Humanism,  of  which  James 
and  Bergson  are  the  most  brilliant  expositors. 

This  philosophic  Weltanshauung  holds  that  while 
science  is  useful  for  certain  purposes,  it  is  the  business  of 
philosophy  to  interpret  reality  from  an  entirely  different 
standpoint.  Reality  arises  from  the  reaction  of  the  whole 
man,  not  of  the  intellect  alone  with  its  snapshot  con- 
cepts. To  discover  what  reality  is  we  must  investigate 
concrete  individual  experience.  The  will  of  man  creates 
his  own  world.  Intuition  and  the  subliminal  conscious- 
ness are  better  revealers  of  reality  than  conscious  thought. 
This  philosophic  movement  runs  parallel,  in  relation  to  the 
one  and  the  many,  to  the  attitude  which  we  discussed  in 
the  earlier  part  of  the  chapter  on  the  static  and  dynamic 
form  of  the  rehgious  consciousness,  —  the  attitude  toward 
the  subliminal  consciousness. 

The  Pragmatic  philosophy  emphasizes  the  fact  of 
change  and  becoming.  It  is  opposed  to  a  ''block  uni- 
verse" and  to  the  ''eternal  now"  aspect  of  absolutism. 
Evolution  is  a  dramatic  process;  becoming  is  the  truth, 
unity  the  illusion  ;  the  many  are  the  real.  In  so  far  as  the 
ethical  element  in  this  new  philosophy  appears  in  con- 
temporary religion,  it  is  the  religion  of  the  "Son  of  Man." 
Jesus  is  a  type  of  what  all  men  may  become.  Scientific 
thought  from  a  different  angle  sometimes,  also,  emphasizes 
this  religious  attitude  as  the  religion  of  the  future. 

Now,  in  so  far  as  this  philosophy  emphasizes  the  value  of 
the  free,  creative  spirit,  and  the  human  element  in  things 
as  opposed  to  impersonal,  scientific  constructions,  as  final, 
and  in  so  far  as  it  emphasizes  an  appreciative  attitude  as  a 
deeper  way  of  viewing  reality,  it  is  bound  to  bring  relief 
and  deliverance  of  some  sort  to  the  troubled  human  spirit 
which  has  been  so  long  bound  in  the  chains  of  scientific  de- 
terminism, or  has  been  thrown,  shipwrecked,  on  the  shores 
of  the  sea  of  materialism.    The  danger  is,  however,  that 


366  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

this  philosophy  of  personality  will  tend  to  over-emphasize 
the  individualistic  point  of  view  and  standard  of  value, 
and  so  stimulate  and  encourage  those  capricious  ten- 
dencies to  which,  side  by  side  with  the  social,  organizing 
tendencies,  our  age  already  inclines.  In  a  word,  for  this 
new  philosophy  there  are  no  absolute  values  except  the 
mere  variety  of  the  individuals  themselves.  It  stands, 
therefore,  for  the  many  as  opposed  to  the  one. 

Summary  and  Criticism  of  Results.  —  The  problem 
which  we  have  been  considering  has  three  aspects.  First, 
it  is  the  essentially  religious  problem  of  how  to  harmonize 
the  ethical  and  the  mystical  experience.  Second,  it  is  the 
old,  old  problem  of  morality.  The  problem  of  the  self- 
renouncing  as  opposed  to  the  self -asserting  will,  or  the 
problem  of  the  adjustment  of  the  individual  to  his  world. 
And,  third,  the  philosophic  problem  of  how  to  reconcile 
the  one  and  the  many. 

Now,  whichever  way  we  turn,  whichever  side  we  em- 
phasize in  our  analysis,  we  find  in  the  argument  a  deep- 
lying  fallacy  and  a  self-destructive  principle. 

For,  first,  if  we  start  from  the  usual  standpoint  of  re- 
ligious experience  and  declare  that  reality  is  one  and  that 
inner  peace  and  salvation  are  to  be  found,  as  say  the 
Upanishads,  Plotinus,  and  the  typical  Mystics  of  all  time,  in 
the  surrender  of  individuality  and  in  its  engulfment  in  the 
sea  of  absolute  being  or  in  the  negation  of  Nirvana,  then 
we  are  confronted  with  the  paradox  —  how,  if  God  has 
created  man  and  needs  him,  he  can  need  him  to  be  nothing. 

"Ich  bin  so  gross  als  Gott:  Er  ist  als  ich  so  klein 
Er  kan  nicht  iiber  mich,  ich  unter  Ihm  nicht  sein."  * 

Moreover,  if  man's  freedom  and  individuality  are  sac- 
rificed and  lost,  then  also  morality  vanishes,  and  this  result 
contradicts  the  data  which  concrete  religious  experience 
itself  gives. 

*  Angelus  Silesius. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS  FORMS  367 

Already,  in  the  preceding  chapters,  we  have  noted  the 
discrepancy  between  the  mystical  and  the  ethical  aspects 
of  religious  experience  and  the  difficulty  of  reconciling  the 
apparently  contradictory  states  of  aspiration  and  striving 
towards  an  infinitely  removed  goal  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  sense  of  attainment,  satisfaction,  and  beatitude  on  the 
other. 

Let  us,  then,  turn  in  the  other  direction  and  emphasize 
the  uniqueness  of  the  individual  and  the  importance  of 
individual  initiative.  This  attitude  leads  to  the  reliance 
of  the  individual  entirely  upon  himself.  It  breaks  the 
bonds  which  bind  him  to  the  invisible  universe  and  he 
loses  his  sense  of  dependence  upon  it.  In  a  word,  it  lead's 
away  from  religious  experience  which  has  always  implied 
man's  relation  to  something  more  than  himself.  This 
problem  we  have  already  considered  in  our  discussion  of 
grace  and  merit. 

Furthermore,  ^Hhe  individual"  can  only  mean  each  and 
every  individual.  So,  unique  value  of  individuality,  the 
one  is  transformed  into  plurality  and  manyness.  Man 
in  his  finite  capacity  is  the  measure  of  all  things.  In  his 
own  experience  is  the  criterion  of  value.  But,  out  of  this 
manyness,  arise  variety  and  clash  of  interests,  and  aims, 
and  different  judgments  of  value  as  in  the  rebellious  selves 
we  have  already  passed  in  review.  We  saw  that  in  break- 
ing from  the  obligations  and  sanctions  of  the  past  and  of 
society  these  selves  have,  again  and  again  gone  under, 
their  life  wasted  by  following  capricious  individual  and 
partial  aims.  In  isolating  themselves  from  the  social 
whole  their  sense  of  separation  from  the  common  welfare 
leads  to  despair.  As  a  vivid  illustration  of  the  isolation  of 
the  solitary  individual,  we  should  turn  to  the  final  chapters 
of  Dante's  ^'Inferno"  and  view  with  him  the  souls  of  the 
proud  and  treacherous  bound  fast  in  the  frozen  abyss  of 
the  ninth  circle  of  hell.  In  general,  the  outcome  of  a  purely 
individual  criterion  of  value  is  anarchy,  the  sense  of  the 
relativity  of  all  values,  as  we  saw  in  relation  to  Faust  and 


368  THE    DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

the  Romantic  Movement  and  a  resulting  pessimism  ex- 
pressed in  the  thought  that  the  universe  is  meaningless 
and  ^'all  in  vain." 

Once  again,  then,  we  seek  unity  as  we  are  doing  to-day 
in  our  emphasis  on  organization,  social  solidarity,  and 
socialism.  The  individual  must  cease  to  be  an  isolated 
unit ;  he  must  get  into  connection  with  the  social  whole. 
But  we  must  beware  lest  in  turning  in  this  direction,  we 
abandon  inner  values  for  outer.  Can  the  peace  and  joy 
the  religious  consciousness  seeks  be  found  in  external 
things  ?  Our  social  service  tends  too  much  to  become  me- 
chanical^ and  over-organized  and  to  miss  the  true  spirit 
of  service  which,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the  spirit  of  friendship. 

The  kind  of  unity  in  which  the  spirit  of  the  times  ex- 
presses itself  hampers  and  stifles  the  creative  spirit.  Wit- 
ness the  vast  industrial  systems,  the  life  of  the  individual 
workers  in  mill  and  factory;  the  suppression  and  sub- 
ordination of  the  individual  in  the  great  armies  of  Euro- 
pean countries ;  the  tendency  to  paternalism  in  govern- 
ments and  to  trust  to  legislation  for  moral  reform.  It  is 
not  an  age  of  great  artists,  poets,  and  prophets.  Rather 
than  a  unity  so  soulless,  mechanical,  and  dead,  we  some- 
times cry  even  for  a  return  to  the  capricious  individualism 
of  the  Romanticist.  Organized  religion,  as  we  saw  in  a 
previous  chapter,  frequently  embodies  this  type  of  unity. 
Mechanical  and  dogmatic,  it  is  opposed  to  the  free  expres- 
sion of  the  individual  and  to  his  criterions  of  value,  so  it 
often  is  not  only  no  inspirer  of  morality  but  even  the  re- 
verse, and  in  so  far  it  deserves  the  condemnation  of 
its  critics  who  claim  that  the  Church  has  failed.  From 
the  point  of  view  of  the  individual  we  all  know  of  cases 
like  the  story  I  heard  of  a  certain  boy,  who  on  being 
told  that  nothing  could  do  away  with  the  wrong  done 
by  lying,  said,  it  could  be  gotten  rid  of  by  the  absolu- 
tion of  the   priest;   and   in   its   social   aspects    to-day, 

^  As,  for  instance,  in  the  tendency  referred  to  above  to  trace  back 
sin  to  poverty  and  disease  as  its  sole  causes. 


THE   WAY   OF  LIFE ITS   FORMS  369 

we  are  overwhelmed  as  perhaps  never  before  by  the 
thought  of  Christian  nations  engaged  in  a  terrible  world- 
war. 

If,  however,  we  hope  by  means  of  altruism  and  social 
service  to  spiritualize  our  work,  we  discover  here,  too,  a 
fallacy.  For  if  it  is  so  good  to  serve,  then  one  must  not 
deny  to  his  neighbor  this  supreme  value.  Let  every  man 
serve  another.  But  if  all  are  to  become  servants,  who  is 
to  be  served  ?  We  have  an  endless  series  with  no  absolute 
value  anywhere.  Or,  on  the  other  hand,  if  we  add  self- 
sacrifice  to  service  to  make  it  complete,  and  I  am  to 
sacrifice  my  own  good  to  serve  you,  can  it  be  shown  that 
your  life  is  of  more  value  than  mine?  This  cannot  be 
shown  unless  we  arbitrarily  assume  that  some  lives  are  of 
more  ^^alue  than  others,  or  else  to  be  sure  it  implies  some 
other  criterion  of  value  than  that  of  social  service  and 
self-sacrifice  themselves.^  Mere  cutting  off  is  not  a  good ; 
nor  is  mere  altruistic  activity  necessarily  so ;  and  a  chain 
of  relative  values  does  not  make  an  absolute  value.  It 
seems,  in  the  end,  to  reduce  to  "quantity"  and  "an  ag- 
gregate," and  a  lowering  of  man's  life  to  unspiritual  levels. 

With  this  result  in  view,  a  new  test  of  value  comes  to 
the  fore  in  our  day,  which  is  once  again  an  emphasis  on  the 
individual.  This  test  of  value  is :  that  is  good  which 
makes  for  the  enhancement  of  life  or  for  individual 
efficiency;  that  is,  it  is  an  emphasis  on  all  the  instincts 
and  capacities  of  the  individual,  and  the  need  of  giving 
them  opportunity  for  complete  expression,  together  with 
the  accompanying  sense  of  freedom  and  joy  which  such 
spontaneous  activity  inevitably  gives.  It  is  a  kind  of 
"frolic,"  play  spirit  and  attitude  which  some  persons  hold 
to  have  been  characteristic  of  the  early  Greeks.  It  is 
called  a  neo-Pagan  attitude  because  it  is  an  attitude  in 
opposition  to  the  fundamental  attitude  of  Christianity. 

1  For  this  reason  the  thesis  of  Mrs.  Comer's  story,  "  Seth  Miles  and  the 
Sacred  Fire,"  Atlantic  Monthly,  December,  1914,  does  not  reason  quite 
sound.    What  if  Richard  Bonniwell,  Jr.,  had  not  "  lifted  the  torch  "  ? 
2b 


370  THE    DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

It  is  opposed  to  the  Christian  spirit  first,  because  although 
it  seeks  to  ehminate  suffering,  as  far  as  possible,  and  to 
give  opportunity  to  all  men,  yet  it  is,  on  the  whole,  opposed 
to  self-sacrifice;  and,  secondly,  it  is  an  emphasis  on  the 
value  of  the  exceptional  individual,  —  an  emphasis  on  the 
value  of  those  whom  Nietzsche  loves  to  call  the  ^^ noble." 
For  if  not  an  emphasis  on  the  exceptional  individual,  we 
have  once  more  the  old  difficulty  of  the  conflict  of  aims 
and  a  resulting  anarchy.  It  is,  therefore,  an  attitude  in 
opposition  to  the  teaching  of  the  New  Testament  parables 
which  emphasizes  the  value  of  the  humble,  even  of  the 
sinners ;  and  it  is  opposed  to  the  spirit  of  the  atonement 
doctrine  as  exemplified  by  the  parable  of  the  Good  Shep- 
herd who  goes  out  to  seek  for  the  lost  sheep  and  gives  his 
life  for  it ;  and  to  the  significance  of  the  Cross  of  Christ. 
Secondly,  it  seems  to  be  an  emphasis  on  the  completest 
earthly  life  merely,  and  as  such  it  is  a  limited  ideal,  which, 
in  denying  or  ignoring  the  reality  of  the  unseen  world, 
gives  us  that  sense  of  finiteness  and  of  dissatisfaction  which 
any  consummation  described  in  finite,  earthly  terms  al- 
ways seems  to  give.  As  instances  of  this,  Shelley's  para- 
dise in  "  Prometheus  Unbound, '^  and  the  pictures  of  the 
various  Utopias.  The  latest  illustration  is  Nietzsche's 
attempt  to  depict  the  triumph  of  his  Zarathustra.  Zara- 
thustra  having  made  his  new  values  loved  by  the  mass  of 
the  people,  announces  the  doctrine  of  the  ^^  eternal  re- 
turn." Decisive  moment :  Zarathustra  interrogates  all 
the  multitude  assembled  for  the  festival :  — 

"*Do  you  wish/  he  says,  'the  return  of  it  all?'    All  reply :  Yes." 
"He  dies  of  joy. 

"Zarathustra  dying  holds  the  earth  locked  in  his  arms.  And  al- 
though no  one  said  a  word,  they  all  knew  that  Zarathustra  was  dead." 

Nietzsche,  himself,  felt  the  unsatisfactoriness  of  this 
solution.  '^I  am  a  seer,"  he  wrote  in  his  notes;  '^but 
my  conscience  casts  an  inexorable  light  upon  my  vision, 
and  I  am  myself  the  doubter."  ^ 

1  "Life  of  Fr.  Nietzsche,"  by  Daniel  Halevy,  pp.  276-277. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  371 

Even  the  New  Jerusalem  of  Isaiah,  the  Paradise  of 
Dante,  the  finales  of  Beethoven's  symphonies  somewhat 
fail  to  be  the  consummation  we  have  hoped  for  and  ex- 
pected. Plotinus,  Isaiah,  Dante,  and  Goethe  admit  that 
the  realization  of  the  vision  is  indescribable. 

The  third  aspect  of  our  problem,  the  problem  of  how  to 
reconcile  the  many  and  the  one  leads  us  over  into  one  of 
the  deepest  regions  of  philosophic  thought.  Ever  since 
its  beginnings,  philosophy  has  been  trying  to  solve  this 
fundamental  problem.  We  can  trace  it  throughout  the 
history  of  Greek  philosophy  in  the  search  for  a  first  or 
fimdamental  principle.  Now  one,  now  the  other  aspect 
of  the  opposition  has  been  emphasized  without  any  wholly 
satisfactory  reconciliation  of  the  two.  Greek  philosophy 
culminated  in  the  systems  of  Plato  and  Aristotle.  These 
systems,  on  the  whole,  made  the  aspect  of  the  one  the 
more  important  or  real  aspect.  For  instance,  the  'ideas'' 
of  Plato,  as  opposed  to  the  world  of  perpetual  flux  which 
exists  as  a  kind  of  negation  of  the  real ;  the  prime  mover, 
of  Aristotle,  eternally  evolves  a  series  of  spheres  which 
has  no  beginning  or  end,  —  and  ever  since  each  of  these 
systems  has  in  its  own  way  influenced  later  philosophic 
thought.^ 

Hindu  philosophy  reduces  plurality  to  the  evil  prin- 
ciple Maia,  but  this  principle  has  no  real  existence ;  it  exists 
only  in  the  mind.  It  is  a  mere  negation.  Brahma,  the 
reality,  is  the  one ;  the  all.  He  is  Atman,  the  Self.  He  is 
the  essence  of  all  things.    Would  you  find  him,  look  within. 

''Verily  this  All  is  Brahma.  It  has  therein  its  birth,  end,  breath; 
as  such  one  should  worship  it  in  stillness."  ^ 

Brahma  is  a  unity  without  plurality  which  has  no  rela- 
tion to  time  and  space,  to  cause  or  effect,  and  for  which 
the  opposition  of  subject-object  does  not  exist. 

^  For  example,  the  great  systems  of  Spinoza  and  Leibnitz ;  these 
systems,  though  ultimately  monistic  systems,  incline  to  parallelistio 
interpretations. 

2  Chandogya  Upanishad,  iii,  14. 


372  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

The  Brahman  teaches  the  disciple :  — 

"Bring  from  yonder  a  fig." 

"Here  it  is,  my  lord." 

"Break  it." 

"It  is  broken,  my  lord." 

"Whatseestthouinit?" 

"Here  are  but  little  seeds,  my  lord." 

"Now  break  one  of  them." 

"It  is  broken,  my  lord." 

"Whatseestthouinit?" 

"Naught  whatsoever,  my  lord." 

And  he  said  to  him :  "Of  that  subtleness  which  thou  canst  not  behold, 
beloved,  is  this  great  fig-tree  made.  Have  faith,  beloved.  In  this 
subtleness  has  this  All  its  essence ;  it  is  the  True ;  it  is  the  Self ;  thou 
are  it,  Svetaketu." 

"Let  my  lord  teach  me  further." 
"Be  it  so,  beloved,"  said  he. 

What  is  the  nature  of  the  self  and  how  to  find  it  ?  Most  of  all  is 
the  self  realized  in  dreamless  sleep.  For  then  the  individual  con- 
sciousness is  merged  in  the  All  or  One.  This  state  is  one  of  absolute 
unconsciousness,  not  of  knowledge.  In  such  deep  sleep  there  is  no 
other.  "  There  is  no  second  outside  of  him ;  no  other  distinct  from 
him. 

"While  He  sees  not,  yet  without  seeing  He  sees ;  the  sight  of  the 
seer  is  not  to  be  broken,  for  it  is  imperishable.  But  there  is  naught 
beside  Him,  naught  apart  from  Him,  that  he  should  see.  .  .  .  When 
He  understands  not,  yet  without  understanding  He  understands ;  the 
understanding  of  the  understander  is  not  to  be  broken,  for  it  is  im- 
perishable. But  there  is  naught  beside  Him,  naught  apart  from  Him, 
that  he  should  understand." 

How,  then,  shall  we  define  the  self,  if  He  is  unknowable  ?  It  can 
only  be  done  in  negative  terms  —  "  Neti,  Neti."  (It  is  not  so,  it  is 
not  so.) 

"  Thou  canst  not  see  the  seer  of  seeing,  thou  canst  not  hear  the  hearer 
of  hearing,  thou  canst  not  comprehend  the  comprehender  of  compre- 
hension, thou  canst  not  know  the  knower  of  knowledge;  he  is  thy 
soul,  that  is  within  all." » 

The  poet  attempts  to  describe  the  self  by  attributes 
which  are  contradictory. 

*  Paul  Deussen,  "The  Philosophy  of  the  Upanishads." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  373 

"He  stays,  yet  wanders  far  from  hence, 
He  reposes,  yet  stays  everywhere  around. 
The  movement  hither  and  thither  of  the  god, 
Who  could  understand  besides  me?"  ^ 

"Resting  is  he  and  yet  restless. 
Afar  is  he  and  yet  so  near ! 
He  is  within  all. 
And  yet  yonder  outside  of  all."  * 

"He  is  the  smallest  of  the  small,  the  greatest  of  the  great." 
"This  is  my  soul  (Atman)  in  my  heart,  smaller  than  a  grain  of  rice 
or  grain  of  millet ;  this  is  my  soul  in  my  heart,  greater  than  the  earth, 
greater  than  the  air,  greater  than  the  heavens,  greater  than  these 
worlds."  3 

In  deep  sleep  the  finite  is  united  to  Brahma  in  a  state  of 
supreme  bliss  which  is  beyond  knowledge,  for  all  contrasts 
are  overcome.  ^^For  when  a  man  finds  his  peace,  his 
resting  place,  in  that  invisible,  unreal,  inexpressible,  un- 
fathomable one,  then  has  he  attained  to  peace."  * 

In  our  study  of  Buddhism  we  saw  how  the  disciple  over- 
comes plurality,  transitoriness,  and  evil  by  renouncing  the 
desires  of  the  personal  will,  and  by  the  attainment  of  en- 
lightenment through  ascetic  disciplines  and  trances. 

A  somewhat  similar  outcome  is  found  in  Stoic  phi- 
losophy. For  Stoicism  there  is  the  fact  of  transitoriness 
and  finitude  as  a  kind  of  fate  in  things.  Yet  it  is  quite  pos- 
sible for  the  wise  man  to  ignore  this  fate  and  to  find  the 
inner  peace  above  the  turmoil  of  this  fleeting  existence 
by  retiring  into  the  citadel  of  the  inner  life,  and  by  setting 
his  heart  on  obedience  to  the  laws  of  life  or  nature  —  the 
true  good.    Thus  Epictetus :  — 

"Does  any  one  fear  things  that  seem  evils  indeed,  but  which  it  is 
in  his  own  power  to  prevent? 

*  Paul  Deussen,  quoted  in  ^*The  Philosophy  of  the  Upanishads,"  p. 
149. 

2  Compare  Emerson's  poem  of  "Brahma." 

3  In  Chand.  3. 14.  3  ;  quoted  in  Deussen's  "The  Philosophy  of  the 
Upanishads." 

*  Deussen,  Ihid. 


374  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

"No,  surely. 

"If,  then,  the  things  independent  of  our  will  are  neither  good  nor 
evil,  and  all  things  that  do  depend  on  will  are  in  our  own  power,  and 
can  neither  be  taken  away  from  us  nor  given  to  us  unless  we  please, 
what  room  is  there  left  for  anxiety?  But  we  are  anxious  about  this 
paltry  body  or  estate  of  ours,  or  about  what  Caesar  thinks,  and  not 
at  all  about  anything  internal.  Are  we  ever  anxious  not  to  take  up  a 
false  opinion?  No;  for  this  is  within  our  own  power.  Or  not  to 
follow  any  pursuit  contrary  to  nature?" 

And  Marcus  Aurelius :  — 

"Think  thyself  fit  and  worthy  to  speak  or  to  do  anything  that  is 
according  to  nature,  and  let  not  the  reproach  or  report  of  some  that 
may  ensue  upon  it  ever  deter  thee.  If  it  be  right  and  honest  to  be 
spoken  or  done,  undervalue  not  thyself  so  much  as  to  be  discouraged 
from  it.  As  for  them,  they  have  their  own  rational  overruling  part 
and  their  own  proper  inclination,  which  thou  must  not  stand  and 
look  about  to  take  notice  of,  but  go  on  straight  whither  both  thine 
own  particular  and  the  common  nature  do  lead  thee ;  and  the  way  of 
both  these  is  but  one."  ^ 

"Whatsoever  is  expedient  unto  thee,  0  World,  is  expedient  unto 
me.  Nothing  can  either  be  unseasonable  unto  me,  or  out  of  date, 
which  unto  thee  is  seasonable.  Whatsoever  thy  seasons  bear  shall 
ever  by  me  be  esteemed  as  happy  fruit  and  increase.  O  Nature! 
from  thee  are  all  things,  in  thee  all  things  subsist,  and  to  thee  all  tend. 
Could  he  say  of  Athens,  Thou  lovely  City  of  Cecrops;  and  shalt 
not  thou  say  of  the  World,  Thou  lovely  City  of  God  ? 

"He  that  seeth  the  things  that  are  now  hath  seen  all  that  either 
was  ever  or  ever  shall  be,  for  all  things  are  of  one  kind  and  all  like 
one  unto  another.  Meditate  often  upon  the  connection  of  all  things 
in  the  world,  and  upon  the  mutual  relation  that  they  have  one  unto 
another.  For  all  things  are  after  a  sort  folded  and  involved  one  within 
another,  and  by  these  means  all  agree  well  together.  For  one  thing 
is  consequent  unto  another  by  local  motion,  by  natural  conspiration 
and  agreement,  and  by  substantial  union  or  the  reduction  of  all  sub- 
stances. 

"What  a  small  portion  of  vast  and  infinite  eternity  it  is  that  is 
allowed  unto  every  one  of  us,  and  how  soon  it  vanisheth  into  the 
general  age  of  the  world.  Of  the  common  substance  and  of  the  com- 
mon soul  also,  what  a  small  portion  is  allotted  unto  us,  and  in  what  a 

1  Bakewell,  Charles  M.,  "Source  Book  in  Ancient  Philosophy." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  375 

little  clod  of  the  whole  earth  it  is  that  thou  doest  crawl.  After  thou 
shalt  rightly  have  considered  these  things  with  thyself  fancy  not  any- 
thing else  in  the  world  any  more  to  be  of  weight  and  moment,  but  this : 
to  do  that  only  which  thine  own  nature  doth  require,  and  to  conform 
thyself  to  that  which  the  conunon  nature  doth  afford. 

"How  easy  a  thing  it  is  for  a  man  to  put  off  from  him  all  turbulent 
adventitious  imaginations,  and  presently  to  be  in  perfect  rest  and 
tranquillity ! 

"Think  thyself  fit  and  worthy  to  speak  or  to  do  anything  that  is 
according  to  nature,  and  let  not  the  reproach  or  report  of  some  that 
may  ensue  upon  it  ever  deter  thee.  If  it  be  right  and  honest  to  be 
spoken  or  done,  undervalue  not  thyself  so  much  as  to  be  discouraged 
from  it.  As  for  them,  they  have  their  own  rational  overruling  part 
and  their  own  proper  inclination,  which  thou  must  not  stand  and 
look  about  to  take  notice  of,  but  go  on  straight  whither  both  thine 
own  particular  and  the  common  nature  do  lead  thee ;  and  the  way  of 
both  these  is  but  one."  ^ 

But  if  evil  is  reduced  to  nothingness  and  mere  appearance, 
as  in  Hindu  thought,  it  still  exists  as  evil  in  the  mind  and 
works  quite  as  much  havoc  there  as  elsewhere,  so  that  the 
problem  is  not  solved  either  from  the  theoretical  or  prac- 
tical points  of  view.  And  the  Stoic  solution  really  suffers 
from  the  same  defect.  Transitoriness  and  manyness,  if 
evil,  are  not  made  of  no  account  by  simply  refusing  to 
consider  them.  Moreover,  as  Plutarch  said  in  his  refu- 
tation of  the  Stoic  theodicy:  ''The  Stoic  sage  does  not 
and  never  did  exist  anywhere  in  the  world." 

Sometimes,  in  philosophy,  all  plurality  is  ''dumped," 
so  to  speak,  into  the  class  called  mattery  and  we  have  a 
duality  rather  than  plurality.  Matter  is  opposed  to  the 
spiritual  principle  of  the  universe,  as  that  which  is  irra- 
tional, which  is  necessity,  and  evil. 

This  is  the  point  of  view,  for  instance,  of  Plotinus,  whose 
doctrine  is  of  interest  to  us  because  of  his  influence  on 
Christian  thought  — ,  on  St.  Augustine,  and  through  him 
on  the  later  mystics.^  A  few  selections  only  from  Plotinus 
can  be  given  here.  "  Everything,"  says  Plotinus,  "  exists 
by  virtue  of  its  unity."    Unity  is  primal,  yet  plurality 

1  Marcus  Aurelius,  ''Meditations."        2  q^  ]y[.  Bakewell,  op.  cit. 


376  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

seems  to  have  a  kind  of  secondary  existence.  "Again, 
strictly  speaking,  we  cannot  talk  of  the  One  as  a  Hhis/ 
or  a  'that,'  but  looking  at  it  from  without,  may  only 
wish  to  interpret  the  ways  in  which  it  affects  us.  Now 
we  get  nearer  to  it,  now  we  fall  farther  short  of  it,  be- 
cause of  the  difficulties  that  hedge  it  about." 

*'The  greatest  of  these  difficulties  is  that  our  apprehension  of  the 
One  does  not  partake  of  the  nature  of  either  understanding  or  abstract 
thought  as  does  our  knowledge  of  other  intelligible  objects,  but  has  the 
character  of  presentation  higher  than  understanding.  For  under- 
standing proceeds  by  concepts,  and  the  concept  is  a  multiple  affair, 
and  the  soul  misses  the  One  when  she  falls  into  number  and  plurality. 
She  must  then  pass  beyond  understanding,  and  nowhere  emerge  from 
her  unity.  She  must,  I  say,  withdraw  from  understanding  and  its 
objects  and  from  every  other  thing,  even  the  vision  of  beauty.  For 
everything  beautiful  comes  after  it  and  is  derived  from  it,  as  all  daylight 
from  the  sun.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  Plato  says  that  the  One  is  in- 
effable in  spoken  or  written  word." 


"Then  too  the  source  does  not  need  the  things  which  follow  after 
it,  and  the  source  of  all  things  has  no  need  of  any.  For  what  wants, 
wants  in  the  sense  that  it  strives  after  its  source.  Again  if  the  One 
needs  anything,  it  is  clearly  seeking  not  to  be  One,  and  hence  needs  its 
own  destruction  qua  One.  Everything  which  wants,  however,  stands 
in  need  of  well-being  and  preservation.  It  follows  that  for  the  One, 
nothing  can  be  good,  nor  can  it  wish  anything.  It  is  rather  super- 
good,  a  good  not  for  itself  but  for  other  things,  if  any  of  them  be  able  to 
attain  it.  Nor  can  the  One  be  thinking,  lest  there  be  difference  and 
motion  in  it.  It  is  prior  to  motion  and  to  thinking.  For  what  shall 
it  think?  Itself?  In  that  case  before  it  thinks  it  will  be  ignorant, 
and  what  is  self-sufficient  will  need  thought  in  order  to  know  itself. 
But  it  does  not  follow  that  because  it  does  not  know  or  think  itself, 
it  will  be  ignorant  of  itself.  For  ignorance  has  to  do  with  an  external 
object,  as  when  one  thing  is  ignorant  of  another.  But  the  Only  One 
will  neither  know  anything,  nor  have  anything  to  be  ignorant  of. 
Being  One  and  united  with  itself  it  does  not  need  to  think  of  itself 
and  of  anything  else.  It  must  not  be  conceived  as  the  thinker,  but 
more  after  the  fashion  of  mere  thought,  which  does  not  think  but  is 
the  cause  of  thinking  m  something  else. 

"The  One  is  all  things  and  yet  no  one  of  them.    For  the  origin  of 
all  things  is  itself,  not  they,  yet  all  things  are  in  their  origin  inasmuch 


THE   WAY   OF  LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  377 

as  they  may  all  be  traced  back  to  their  source.  It  is  better,  perhaps, 
to  say  that  in  their  origin  they  exist  not  as  present  but  as  future  things. 
How  then  can  they  proceed  from  the  One  in  its  simplicity,  in  whose 
self-identity  there  is  no  appearance  of  variety  or  duality  whatsoever? 
I  reply,  for  the  very  reason  that  none  of  them  was  in  the  One  are  all  of 
them  derived  from  it.  Furthermore,  in  order  that  they  may  be  real 
existences,  the  One  is  not  an  existence,  but  the  father  of  existences. 
And  the  generation  of  existence  is  as  it  were  the  first  act  of  generation. 
Being  perfect  by  reason  of  neither  seeking  nor  possessing  nor  needing 
anything,  the  One  overflows  as  it  were,  and  what  overflows  forms 
another  hypostasis.  .  .  . 

"If  now  the  world  of  real  existences  and  what  transcends  real  exist- 
ence is  such  as  we  have  described,  no  evil  can  inhere  either  in  real  ex- 
istence or  in  the  transcendent  One.  For  they  are  good.  If  then  evil 
exist,  there  remains  for  it  the  sphere  of  not-being,  and  it  is  as  it  were  a 
certain  form  of  not-being,  and  is  concerned  with  things  mixed  with 
not^being  or  having  some  commerce  with  it."  * 

Fundamentally,  matter  is  simply  "another."  That  is, 
it  is  what  is  indeterminate  as  opposed  to  what  is  indi- 
vidual. Plotinus  is  interested  in  this  doctrine  in  connection 
with  the  religious  experience  of  sin  and  salvation.  Now, 
the  soul  which  has  seen  as  in  a  vision  the  true  good,  and 
then  turns  away  from  it  to  the  plurality  of  this  world  of 
shadows  and  the  perishable  is,  according  to  Plotinus,  the 
soul  that  sins. 

"But  if  they  alter  their  mode  of  existence  and  change  from  the 
whole  to  the  part,  and  take  to  existing  independently  and  of  them- 
selves, and  find,  so  to  speak,  their  association  with  the  world-soul 
irksome,  they  revert  each  to  an  independent  existence.  When  they 
have  done  this  for  some  time,  and  have  deserted  the  world-soul  and 
estranged  themselves  from  her  through  their  separation,  and  no  longer 
regard  the  intelligible  universe,  then  each  becomes  a  part  and  is  isolated 
and  weakened  and  busied  with  many  things,  and  regards  the  part 
instead  of  the  whole.  And  then  when  each  through  her  separation 
from  the  whole  has  lighted  upon  some  one  particular  part,  and  has 
deserted  everything  else,  and  turned  to  and  entered  into  that  one  part 
which  is  subject  to  the  impact  and  influence  of  other  things,  her  apos- 
tasy from  the  whole  is  accomplished,  and  she  directs  the  individual 
surrounded  as  he  is  by  an  environment,  and  is  already  in  contact  and 

1  Bakewell,  "Source  Book  in  Ancient  Philosophy." 


378  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

concerned  with  external  things,  and  lives  in  their  presence  and  has 
sunk  deep  into  them.  Then  it  is  that  she  is  aptly  said  to  have  lost 
her  wings  and  to  lie  in  the  bonds  of  the  body  —  erring  as  she  is  from 
her  life  of  innocence  passed  in  governing  the  higher  world  at  the  side 
of  the  world-soul." 

Salvation  is  in  the  vision  of  the  good  which  comes  when 
we  renounce  the  things  of  this  world.  "He  who  has 
beheld  the  True  Beloved  knows  the  truth  of  what  I  say, 
how  the  soul  then  receives  a  new  life  when  she  has  gone 
forth  to  it  and  participated  in  it.  .  .  .  Ourselves  we  see 
illumined,  full  of  the  light  of  the  intelligible,  or  rather  as 
that  very  light  itself  .  .  .  verily  we  see  ourselves  as  made, 
nay,  as  being  God  himself.  Then  it  is  that  we  are  kindled. 
But  when  we  again  sink  to  earth,  we  are,  as  it  were,  put  out.'' 

"But  why  then  do  we  not  remain  in  the  vision?  I  reply,  because 
we  have  never  wholly  come  forth  from  our  earthly  selves.  But  there 
shall  come  a  time  for  us  when  the  vision  will  be  unbroken,  and  we  are 
no  longer  disturbed  by  any  unrest  of  the  body. 

"Now  whosoever  beholds  himself,  when  he  beholds  his  real  self 
will  see  it  as  such  a  being,  or  rather  he  will  be  united  with  such  a  being, 
and  feel  himself  to  have  become  such  as  is  wholly  simple.  Indeed  we 
ought  perhaps  to  say  'he  will  see  himself.'  Nor  should  we  speak  of  an 
object  of  his  vision,  if  he  have  to  mean  thereby  a  duality  of  the  seer  and 
the  seen  and  do  not  identify  the  two  as  one.  It  is  a  bold  thing  to  say, 
but  in  the  vision  a  man  neither  sees,  nor  if  he  sees,  distinguishes  what 
he  sees  from  himself  nor  fancies  that  there  are  two  —  the  seer  and  the 
seen.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  by  becoming  as  it  were  another  than  him- 
self, and  by  neither  being  himself  nor  belonging  to  himself  that  he  at- 
tains the  vision.  And  having  surrendered  himself  to  it  he  is  one  with 
it,  as  the  centre  of  two  circles  might  coincide.  For  these  centres  when 
they  coincide  become  one,  and  when  the  circles  are  separated  there  are 
two  centres  again.  And  it  is  in  this  sense  that  we  too  speak  of  a  differ- 
ence. It  follows  that  the  vision  is  hard  to  describe.  For  how  could 
a  man  report  as  something  different  from  himself,  what  at  the  time 
of  his  vision  he  did  not  see  as  different  but  as  one  with  himself? 

"This  is  clearly  the  intent  of  that  injunction  of  the  mysteries  which 
forbids  communication  of  their  secret  to  the  uninitiated.  Since  it  was 
not  communicable  it  was  forbidden  to  explain  the  divine  secret  to  any 
one  to  whom  it  had  not  been  vouchsafed  to  see  it  himself. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS  FORMS  379 

"So  it  is  that  the  life  of  the  gods  and  of  godlike  and  blessed  men  is  a 
liberation  from  the  things  of  earth,  a  life  that  takes  no  joy  in  them,  a 
flight  of  the  soul  isolated  from  all  that  exists  to  the  isolation  of  God."  * 

So,  here  too,  in  Plotinus,  salvation  consists  in  a  flight 
from  the  transitory,  finite,  plural  existence  to  the  sanctu- 
ary of  mystic,  inner  experience ;  but  out  there  in  the  world 
plurality  and  evil  remain,  and  again  the  problem  is  not 
solved.  And  the  One  itself,  what  is  it  apart  from  the 
manyness  and  variety  of  the  finite?  It  is  ineffable  and 
indescribable.  Does  it  not  reduce,  then,  very  nearly  to 
the  indeterminate  which  is  the  character  ascribed  to 
matter  and  to  evil  (the  other)  ? 

In  all  these  systems  of  philosophy,  it  is  apparent  that 
there  is  something  other  than  the  One  which  cannot  be 
made  intelligible  as  a  mere  zero  or  negation  of  the  one,  or 
simply  by  calhng  it  matter  or  evil..  Clearly,  philosophy 
needs  the  many  in  order  to  have  any  real  one.  Yet,  again, 
how  can  the  real  be  one  if  it  is  many?  Or,  to  express 
the  matter  in  religious  language,  if  God  is  good  and  om- 
nipotent, why  is  there  evil  in  this  God's  world  ?  This  is 
the  serious  problem  which  an  absolutist  philosophy  and 
religious  monotheism  aUke  have  to  face. 

A  recent  attempt  to  overcome  the  opposition  between 
the  one  and  the  many  by  first  reducing  them  to  a  duality 
of  spirit  and  matter  is  to  be  found  in  the  brilliant  exposi- 
tion of  Professor  Henri  Bergson. 

The  primal  reahty  for  Professor  Bergson  is  a  vital  en- 
ergy, or  better,  a  supra-consciousness  which  is  spontaneous, 
free,  and  incalculable.  It  may  be  symboUzed  by  the  rush- 
ing or  shooting  forth  of  a  mighty  torrent  or  meteor.  It 
is  like  a  great  tide  of  the  sea  which  has  its  ebb  as  well  as 
its  flow.  Bergson  himself  speaks  of  the  movement  and 
the  counter-movement:  ^^Life  is  an  ascending  wave  op- 
posed by  the  descending  movement  of  matter."  ^ 

1  Bakewell,  "  Source  Book  in  Ancient  Philosophy." 

2  H.  Bergson,  "L'Evolution  Creatrice";  and  "Life  and  Conscious- 
ness," Hibbert  Journal,  December,  1912. 


380  THE   DKAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

The  primal  energy  is  creative  but,  like  instinctive  im- 
pulse, it  is  unconscious  as  to  its  end.     It  recalls  Tennyson's 

"Like  some  wild  poet  when  he  works 
Without  a  conscience  or  an  aim." 

Now  matter  for  Bergson  is  defined  simply  as  the  in- 
version of  this  primary  movement.  Matter  is  essentially 
the  extended.  Matter  is  not  a  thing;  it  is  simply  the 
ebbing  of  the  tide,  the  inverse  of  the  life  impulse.  It  is 
energy  which  has  run  down  into  passivity  and  the  extended 
of  space  forms.  It  is  consciousness  which  has  lost  its 
creative  freedom  and  become  automatic,  lifeless  —  like 
''dead  matter,"  as  we  call  it.  That  is,  matter  is  the  re- 
sult of  the  relaxing  of  the  tension  of  the  great  ''inner  push" 
of  the  life  current  which  sweeps  through  time.  Says 
Bergson,  "The  rising  wave  of  life  or  consciousness  —  which 
at  one  point  has  passed  through  matter,  the  obstacle  which 
it,  however,  drags  along  with  it  to  weight  its  progress  — 
includes  potentialities  without  number  which  interpene- 
trate and  to  which,  consequently,  neither  the  category  of 
unity  nor  that  of  multiplicity  is  appropriate,  used,  as  they 
both  are,  for  inert  matter.  This  matter  which  it  bears 
along  with  it  alone  can  divide  the  life  current  into  distinct 
personalities." 

By  thus  reducing  all  to  movement  and  a  reverse  move- 
ment, or  more  psychologically,  to  free  conscious  impulse 
and  its  opposite  habit,  Bergson  thinks  to  overcome  dual- 
ism and  to  make  matter  rational.  But  to  make  movement 
a  fundamental  principle  seems  to  me  rather  to  obscure 
than  to  clarify  the  whole  subject.  If  we  express  it  more 
psychologically  in  terms  of  consciousness  and  habit,  (and 
this  is  what  Bergson  really  means,  I  should  suppose,)  we 
have  still  to  ask  whether  the  synthesis  is  really  accom- 
plished or  the  existence  of  matter  really'-  explained.  The 
theory  simply  states  the  fact  that  in  the  universe  there  is 
something  other  than  self-consciousness  itself,  something 
immediate,  irrational,  and  irreducible.    Matter  is  still 


THE   WAY  OF  LIFE  —  ITS  FORMS  381 

what  consciousness  finds  as  a  limitation  to  its  free  activity 
—  an  obstacle,  '^another/'  It  is  the  state  into  which  the 
free  consciousness  lapses  when  it  becomes  passive  and 
non-creative,  i.e.  a  state  which  is  mechanical  and  deter- 
mined as  matter  is.  Bergson  means,  I  should  suppose, 
a  state  with  which  we  are  familiar  as  action  which  has 
become  automatic  —  a  habit,  a  necessity. 

Thus,  according  to  Bergson,  matter  and  consciousness 
have  a  common  origin  and  one  is  simply  the  reversal  of 
the  other.  Consciousness  is  active,  free,  creative.  Mat- 
ter is  ''action  unmaking  itself,"  degenerating,  stagnating, 
becoming  unfree,  determined.  In  Bergson's  terms  ''the 
extinguished  fragments  of  the  rocket  consciousness  is 
what  we  mean  by  matter."  Consciousness  meets  with 
resistance  in  matter  but  it  seeks  "to  penetrate  matter 
with  contingency  and  to  turn  it  into  an  instrument  of 
freedom."  In  this  its  task,  the  creative  impulse  only 
partially  succeeds.  "Because  of  the  presence  of  matter, 
the  primary  impulse  cannot  create  absolutely.  Matter 
so  reacts  upon  the  life  impulse  as  to  break  up  its  original 
force  into  separate  individualities."  Matter  is  an  ob- 
stacle. Yet  also,  a  stimulus  to  effort,  and  so,  in  a  way, 
itself  makes  creation  possible.  Matter  is  only  the  degen- 
eration of  the  activity  of  the  conscious  force  itself,  and  in 
this  way  the  dualism  of  spirit  and  matter  is  explained  and 
done  away  with.  Reality  is  one.  It  is  a  life  impulse,  or 
rather  supra-consciousness  setting  forth  on  a  great  spirit- 
ual adventure.  Its  story  is  expressed  in  terms  of  evolu- 
tion. 

If  the  teleology  which  Professor  Bergson  explicitly 
excludes  but  which  the  terms  which  he  uses  suggest  (for 
instance,  when  matter  is  treated  as  an  obstruction  to 
creative  consciousness  it  appears  to  be  an  evil  and  what 
ought  to  be  overcome  by  this  free  energy)  were  admitted, 
then,  perhaps,  this  system  might  offer  some  explanation 
of  the  difficulty  of  the  many  and  the  one.  As  it  is,  the 
success  which  consciousness  has  attained  is,  and  always 


382  THE   DRAMA   OP  THE   SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

will  be,  limited  and  partial.  Its  attainment  is,  as 
Mr.  Balfour  has  described  it,  simply:  'Ho  inflict  a  few 
scratches  on  the  outer  crust  of  the  world  .  .  .  while  the 
huge  mass  of  matter  remains  and  must  remain  what  it 
has  always  been  —  the  undisputed  realm  of  lifeless  de- 
terminism." ^ 

Another  notable  though  very  different  attempt  in  con- 
temporary philosophy  to  harmonize  the  one  with  the  many 
is  that  of  F.  H.  Bradley  in  his  '^  Appearance  and  Reality." 

F,  H.  Bradley  on  the  One  and  the  Many,  —  For  Bradley 
the  great  difficulty  is  with  the  discursive  and  relational 
character  of  thought.  Bradley  holds  the  real  cannot  be 
outside  thought.  There  is  no  ^Hhing  in  itself"  —  and 
yet  e\ddently  there  is  another  than  thought,  for  there  is 
always  a  distinction  between  the  ''what"  and  the  ''that," 
between  the  predicate  and  the  subject.  ''The  'that'  of 
the  actual  subject  will  forever  give  a  something  which  is 
not  a  mere  idea,  something  which  is  different  from  any 
truth,  something  which  makes  such  a  difference  to  your 
thinking  that  without  it  you  have  not  even  thought  com- 
pletely." 

Reality  should  be  the  identity  of  idea  and  existence  but 
in  thought  these  two  aspects  of  the  real  fall  asunder.  The 
aim  of  thought  "is  to  give  a  character  to  existence  in 
which  it  can  rest."  Yet  thought  never  succeeds  in  com- 
pletely uniting  the  two  aspects  of  the  real.  It  cannot,  for 
instance,  unite  the  thing  with  its  qualities  or  transcend 
the  infinite  process  which  the  relational  form  involves  so 
as  to  reach  the  immediacy  which  belong  to  existence. 
The  dilemma,  in  a  word,  is  as  follows :  We  have,  on  the 
one  hand  the  fact  of  sensible  immediate  experience  which 
is  different  from  thought  because  of  thought's  essential 
ideaHty.  Ideality  consists  in  the  alienation  from  the 
"what"  of  the  "that"  —  and  if  this  distinction  were 
transcended,  it  would  mean  the  end  of  thought,  for  thought 
which  does  not  involve  relating  is  not  thought  —  and  if, 

1  A.  H.  Balfour,  Hihhert  Journal,  October,  1911. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  383 

on  the  other  hand,  the  immediate  exists  outside  thought 
then  thought  does  not  include  all  reality.  But  this  would 
be  to  reintroduce  the  thing-in-itself.  But  this  again  if 
real  would  be  unknowable;  and  the  very  fact  that  our 
immediate  experience  is  always  changing  its  content  brings 
back  ideality ;  that  is,  difference,  distinction,  comparison, 
and  relations.  The  relational  form,  however,  points  be- 
yond itself  to  an  all-inclusive  unity  beyond  relations,  and 
thought  strives  to  make  the  ideal  content  one  with  the 
felt  reality.  Yet,  to  attain  this  goal  thought  would  have 
'Ho  transcend  its  proper  self  and  become  another"  and 
why,  asks  Mr.  Bradley,  ^'should  not  thought  be  thus 
overcome?"  ''Does  not  the  river  run  into  the  ocean  and 
the  self  lose  itself  in  love?"  Thus  "in  thought's  happy 
suicide,"  thinks  Mr.  Bradley,  the  goal  might  be  attained. 

First :  The  other  into  which  mere  thought  would  be 
transformed  would  be  an  absolute  experience  which  would 
have  beside  thought  the  immediate  character  of  feeling. 
It  would  be  one,  that  is,  a  harmonious  system  which  con- 
tains all  its  differences  in  a  unity.  It  would  be  an  identity 
of  idea  and  existence.  Although  we  cannot  realize  this 
absolute  experience  in  detail,  we  are  sure  it  exists,  Bradley 
holds,  for  it  is  the  criterion  we  make  use  of  when  we  judge 
between  the  true  and  the  false  and  condemn  inconsistency, 
discrepancy,  and  "mere  appearance"  generally.  More- 
over, the  effort  we  make  to  overcome  incompleteness  in 
theory  and  in  practice  points  to  this  conclusion  of  an  all- 
inclusive  and  harmonious  experience. 

Secondly:  This  experience  is  individual  and  perfect. 
To  be  individual  implies  determinate  being.  That  is, 
the  one  reality  is  qualified,  even  restricted  in  a  way,  by  the 
manyness  of  appearance  —  for  if  it  were  not  thus  qualified 
we  should  have  simply  the  vagueness  and  immediacy  of 
mere  feeling,  but  absolute  reality  is  the  union  of  ideaUty 
with  immediacy.  The  absolute  experience  overcomes 
the  distinction  of  a  world  of  appearance  by  including  it  in 
its  essence.     Only  as  anything  is  taken  in  isolation  is  it 


384  THE    DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

excluded  from  the  absolute  experience.  Hence  the  ab- 
solute experience  includes  all  struggle,  error,  pain,  evil 
and  finiteness  generally,  but  in  such  wise  that  they  are 
transcended  and  transmuted  J 

This  outcome  of  Bradley^s,  that  is,  of  an  One  in  which 
the  many  of  finite  experience  are  transmuted  and  absorbed 
—  unlike  any  experience  that  we  know  —  gives  us,  some- 
how, in  spite  of  Bradley^s  own  insistence  on  the  fact  of  the 
reality  of  the  world  of  appearance,  and  on  the  need  of  the 
one  to  retain  the  many  to  give  it  concreteness  and  defi- 
niteness,  —  the  impression  of  an  One  of  which  nothing 
can  be  said.  Thus  Bradley's  whole,  in  which  phenomenal 
distinctions  are  merged,  is  very  like  the  ineffable  and 
indescribable  One  of  Plotinus  and  of  the  other  mystics; 
also  like  the  negation  and  nothingness  of  Nirvana  which 
can  only  be  described  as  not  this  particular  experience  yet 
better  than  anything  that  finite  experience  has  imagined. 

We  have,  in  a  word,  arrived  at  an  essentially  mystical 
attitude.  Now  again  and  again  in  our  study  of  religious 
experience  we  have  noted  the  logical  difficulty  about 
mysticism.  Further,  our  study  of  this  experience  in  con- 
crete instances  showed  us  that  the  mystic  attitude  is  only 
one  element  in  the  whole  which  religious  experience  is. 
Mr.  Bradley  seems  more  or  less  to  have  accepted  the 
conclusion  which  in  his  argument  he  condemned,  namely, 
of  passing  beyond  thought  to  reach  complete  reality.  In 
a  word,  the  manyness  of  the  finite  self  with  all  its  aspira- 
tions, struggles,  ideals,  its  experience  of  tragedy  or  of  joy 
seems  to  become  again  unimportant  and  unreal.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  attainment  since  it  is  the  attain- 
ment of  the  finite  striving  and  search,  has  no  meaning 
apart  from  these. 

Nietzsche^ s  Doctrine  of  the  Eternal  Recurrence  as  a  Solu- 
tion of  the  Opposition  between  the  One  and  the  Many.  —  This 
doctrine — in  which  Nietzsche  appears  to  have  found  great 
satisfaction — runs,  if  I  understand  it,  as  follows :  The 
*  Italics  are  mine. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE ITS   FORMS  385 

world  as  we  know  it  is  a  world  of  flux  and  change  and 
chance  —  '^fragments  and  members  and  fearful  chance — • 
but  no  men."  To  Uberate  it  is  needed  a  ''bridge  into  the 
future. "  ' '  To  redeem  what  is  past  and  so  transform  every 
'it  was'  into  'thus  would  I  have  it' — that  alone  I  call 
redemption." 

There  are  some  hours  for  the  return  of  which  man  would 
give  all  that  he  possesses,  and  all  his  hope  of  heaven.  "  It 
was" — thus  the  affliction  of  the  will  is  named.  "That  it 
cannot  break  time  and  the  desire  of  time  —  that  is  the 
hardest  affliction  of  the  will."  Yet  all  that  has  been  will 
come  again  —  the  good  and  the  bad  together  —  for  all 
moments  of  time  and  all  events  are  interrelated.  We 
cannot  have  one  without  the  others. 

"Eternity  is  sought  by  all  delight." 

"  The  woe  of  the  world  is  deep 
And  deeper  still  than  woe  —  delight." 

"If  ye  ever  wanted  to  have  one  time  twice,  if  ye  ever  said  'Thou 
pleasest  me,  0  happiness,  O  instant,  O  moment,' ye  wished  everything 
to  come  back. 

"Everything  anew,  everything  etemaJ,  everything  chained,  knotted, 
in  love.  Oh !  thus  ye  loved  the  world !  Ye  elemental  ones,  ye  love 
it  eternally  and  for  all  time.  And  even  unto  woe  ye  say:  *Pass,  go, 
but  return ! '    For  eternity's  sought  by  all  delight."  ^ 

Thus  all  events  will  appear  again  in  eternal  recurrence  and 
the  wheel  come  full  circle. 

I  have  given,  of  course,  too  briefly  and  inadequately, 
these  sketches  to  suggest  the  way  in  which  various  sys- 
tems of  philosophy  have  grappled  with  our  problem  of 
the  one  and  the  many.  It  is  not  the  business  of  religious 
faith  to  solve  the  metaphysical  problem  of  the  one  and 
the  many,  yet  religion  does  need  in  the  end  an  adequate 
metaphysic  to  rest  upon. 

Hindu  thought,  we  saw,  emphasized  the  fact  that  ab- 
solute reality  is  the  Self,  and  this  Self  is  in  all  things. 
For  Plotinus  the  one  is  individual.    The  contemporary 

*  Thus  spake  Zarathustra. 
2c 


386  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

theories  of  Bradley  and  Bergson,  while  not  wholly  success- 
ful, suggest,  at  least,  a  possible  solution  to  the  problem 
from  the  point  of  view  of  religious  experience.  Reality, 
says  Bradley,  is  experience;  it  is  one  and  absolute,  yet 
individual,  and  the  individual  is  determined  by  what  is 
denied  and  excluded  as  well  as  by  what  is  afl&rmed.  A 
perfect  and  absolute  Individual  does  include  the  rest- 
lessness, the  error,  the  tragedy  of  finite  life  in  one  whole 
and  perfect  self-conscious  experience  even  though  trans- 
muting them  in  an  harmonious  system. 

Bergson  emphasizes  the  other  aspect.  The  one  con- 
scious life  is  broken  up  by  the  obstruction  of  matter  into 
a  plurality  of  finite  individuals  and  thereby  the  one  is 
made  more  ^'precise."  The  life  impulse  is  creative;  that 
is,  ' '  it  gives  out  more  than  it  has. ' '  Hence  it  is  ^ '  a  spiritual 
force.''  But  to  be  truly  creative  means  to  overcome  re- 
sistance in  the  material  realization  of  the  creative  ideal. 
The  idea,  for  instance,  of  a  poem,  or  of  a  solution  of  a 
scientific  problem,  the  dream  of  some  business  enterprise, 
or  whatever  form  the  idea  may  take, — becomes  real  only 
when  made  concrete  and  embodied  in  some  material  ex- 
istence. Says  Bergson:  *'The  passage  of  consciousness 
through  matter  has  just  this  aim,  we  may  suppose,  to  bring 
to  precision  in  the  form  of  distinct  personahties — tendencies 
and  potentialities  which  at  first  were  mingled,  and  also  to 
permit  these  personahties  to  test  their  force  whilst  at  the 
same  time  increasing  it  by  an  effort  of  self-creation  —  an 
effort  which  may  pursue  its  path  into  the  beyond  —  of  a 
higher  form  of  existence,  so  that  the  ultimate  reason  of 
human  fife  is  a  creation  of  self  by  self,  the  continual  en- 
richment of  personality  by  elements  which  it  does  not 
draw  from  outside  but  causes  to  spring  forth  from  itself."  ^ 

We  have  reached  the  crux  of  the  situation.  The  essen- 
tial problem  is  to  find  the  true  self  or  experience  which 
can  be  an  harmonious  union  of  the  many  and  the  one. 
This  was  also  essentially  the  outcome  of  our  quest  in  the 

1  H.  Bergson,  "Creative  Evolution." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  387 

discussion  of  the  opposition  between  the  temporal  and  the 
eternal  and  also  of  the  opposition  between  the  static  and 
the  dynamic  form  of  religious  experience. 

Furthermore,  this  is  really  the  issue  in  the  rebellion  of 
those  individuals,  the  Fausts,  Cains,  Zarathustras  and  the 
heroines  of  Ibsen,  whose  self-assertion  we  considered 
above.  These  rebellious  spirits,  we  saw,  are  each  and  all 
rebels  against  an  external  authority,  whether  of  church 
or  state,  whether  of  tradition  or  convention,  embodied  in 
the  family  or  any  other  social  group,  an  authority  which 
imposes  itself  arbitrarily  upon  them.  Science  emphasizes 
the  value  of  the  natural  human  life.  Christianity  has 
taught  the  value  of  every  human  soul.  Kant's  critical 
analysis  reveals  the  practical  value  of  the  personal  will. 
These  rebels  find  their  good  in  being  a  law  unto  them- 
selves. They  cannot  find  satisfaction  in  the  renunciation 
and  submission  which  religion  and  social  life  alike  have 
demanded  of  them,  for  they  cannot  overcome  their  in- 
stinctive belief  in  the  value  of  something  which  they  call 
their  individual  self.  Hence  the  end  for  them  means  to 
express  themselves,  to  live  the  complete  life  at  every 
point  —  in  every  nerve  and  in  every  muscle,  in  every  in- 
terest, in  every  plan  and  purpose.  They  will  be  a  law 
unto  themselves.  Then  out  of  the  inevitable  conflict  of 
the  many  individual  ideals  arises  the  question  —  Who  is 
myself  ? 

^  Now  the  individual  self  as  it  appears  in  experience  is 
not  imified.  It  is  itself  an  unsolved  problem  of  the  many 
and  the  one.  For  as  we  find  it  in  experience,  it  is  a  mass 
of  fleeting  experiences  and  of  changing  content,  of  restless 
longings  and  capricious  needs.  A  many  which  would 
fain  be  one,  but  so  far  an  unreconciled  many  and  one. 
The  self  is  changed  by  what  comes  to  it  from  the  environ- 
ment. The  varying  experiences  which  it  encounters  on 
its  pilgrimage  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave  so  disturb  and 

1  See  F.  H.  Bradley,  "Appearance  and  Reality,"  Chapter  IX,  on  the 
Internal  Disruption  of  the  Self  of  Experience. 


388  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

change  the  self  that  it  is  impossible  to  find  any  iden- 
tity whether  of  body  or  mind,  of  self-feeling  or  interest  to 
which  we  can  give  the  name  of  one's  self.  ''There  is  no 
limit  to  the  self's  mutability." 

The  wholeness  which  the  self  longs  for  is  a  beyond  to 
its  present  experience. — Another,  as  the  philosophers  have 
called  it.  Yet  this  other,  beyond  the  self's  present  ex- 
perience, is  not  altogether  an  alien  other,  for  it  is  that 
which,  if  present,  would  give  to  the  imperfect  and  partial 
experience  of  the  self  the  peace,  salvation,  completion  of 
experience  which  it  longs  for.  It  is  the  self's  own  ideal. 
Therefore  it  is  the  experience  which  it  ought  to  strive  for. 

These  considerations  point  to  an  ethical  solution  to  our 
problem.  We  want  to  find  some  universal  principle  which 
shall  not  only  unify  ''the  many''  of  fleeting  individual 
experience,  but  one  which  shall  harmonize  the  conflicting 
variety  of  ideals  of  the  world  of  many  individuals.  That 
is,  as  already  suggested,  that  which  shall  unify  the  self's 
discrepancy  is  an  ought,  an  universal,  ethical  ideal,  an 
ideal  for  all  selves. 

I  know  of  no  better  expression  of  such  an  ethical  prin- 
ciple than  that  of  Kant's  categorical  imperative.  This 
universal  law  is  a  command  to  every  one  to  so  act  that  the 
principle  of  his  action  might  become  a  law  for  all  intelli- 
gent beings.  Or,  otherwise  expressed,  Will  always  the  good- 
will. This  imiversal  statement  of  the  ought  is,  of  course, 
highly  abstract,  and  to  reUgious  experience  it  seems  cold. 
Professor  Royce  ^  has  given  more  concreteness  and  warmth 
to  the  principle  in  his  statement  of  it.  "Be  loyal  to  the 
spirit  of  loyalty,  everywhere."  Kant,  again,  has  expressed 
the  principle  in  another  way  which  brings  it  nearer  to  re- 
ligious experience.  His  expression  is,  in  effect.  Reverence 
personaUty  everywhere.  By  a  person  Kant  means  that 
whose  nature  it  is  to  be  an  end  in  itself,  that  is,  a  rational 
and  self-determining  being.  The  categorical  imperative 
then  becomes:    "Act  so  as  to  use  humanity  whether  in 

1  Josiah  Royce,  "The  Philosophy  of  Loyalty." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  389 

your  own  person  or  that  of  another  always  as  an  end, 
never  as  merely  a  means."  This  is  the  essential  teaching, 
also,  I  take  it,  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  and  the  par- 
ables of  Jesus,  and  likewise  of  Paul's  chapter  on  Caritas 
(1  Cor.  13). 

^  For  the  fundamental  elements  or  ideas  in  the  gospel  of 
Jesus  are :  1st,  the  idea  of  the  fatherhood  of  God  involv- 
ing the  sonship  of  man ;  2d,  the  value  of  the  individual 
and  the  spiritual  nature  of  religion  —  that  is,  the  inner 
nature  of  sin  and  salvation  and  of  the  way  of  life  as  a  way 
of  righteousness;  3d,  the  idea  of  The  Elingdom  of  God, 
or  the  interrelatedness  of  individuals,  an  interrelatedness 
brought  about  through  their  sonship  to  God,  which,  again, 
depends  on  righteousness  of  life  (for  instance,  the  sayings 
''Not  every  one  who  saith  unto  me  'Lord,  Lord'  shall 
enter  into  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  but  he  who  doeth  the 
will  of  my  Father";  "Be  ye  therefore  perfect  as  your 
Father  is  perfect"  ;  the  golden  rule;  the  two  command- 
ments of  the  Kingdom). 

The  key  to  our  problem  is  personality,  but,  again,  a  new 
problem  confronts  us.  For  it  is  not  easy  to  discover  con- 
cretely what  we  mean  by  personality.  Already  it  has 
been  hinted  that  there  is  scarcely  a  bound  to  the  self's 
mutability.  In  truth,  it  is  almost  a  commonplace  to  assert 
to-day  what  modern  psychology  has  made  so  clear  — 
first,  that  the  social  experience  of  his  heredity  and  environ- 
ment have  largely  made  the  individual  what  he  is ;  and, 
secondly,  he  is  what  he  is  only  through  his  relatedness  to 
other  men.  As  father  or  son,  as  citizen,  friend,  physician, 
teacher,  or  business  man,  he  stands  in  relation  to  others, 
and  this  relatedness  involves  obligations  and  limitations 
which  make  his  whole  life  another  from  what  it  would  be 
without  them.  He  is  not  a  person  in  so  far  as  he  is  iso- 
lated. His  very  life  is  in  its  relatedness,  and  in  so  far  as 
the  individual  is  capricious  and  free  from  obligations,  he 

*  See  Chapter  I,  where  I  tried  to  sketch  the  ethical  development  of 
the  reUgion  of  Israel. 


390  THE   DKAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

is  not  a  person.  In  fact,  he  is  a  person  only  as  he  is  bound 
to  something  more  than  himself.  He  is  a  person  in  so  far 
as  he  is  dedicated  to  an  ideal  —  loyal;  in  religious  lan- 
guage, in  so  far  as  he  embodies  in  his  Hfe  the  will  of  God 
(the  absolutely  good  will). 

The  real  solution  of  the  problem  of  diversity  in  unity  of 
the  individual  self,  and  also  of  the  interrelations  of  the 
many  individual  selves  —  the  union  of  their  various  ideals 
in  a  system  or  kingdom  of  ends,  as  Kant  called  it  —  will 
be  found  when  a  principle  is  found  —  or  more  concretely 
an  universal  and  ideal  selfhood  —  which  shall  be  inclusive 
enough  to  unite  and  harmonize  all  aims.  In  small  groups 
we  have  concrete  experience  of  how  this  may  be  carried 
out.  When,  for  instance,  the  people  of  a  city  differing  in 
creed,  in  class,  and  race,  cooperate  to  secure  some  common 
end,  —  let  us  say,  for  instance  (to  take  an  illustration 
from  the  experience  of  our  own  day),  to  secure  a  play- 
ground for  the  children  of  the  city  as  a  whole,  then  we 
have  a  real  community  spirit  and  life  —  an  inclusive 
selfhood.^ 

To  treat  another  as  a  person  implies,  then,  that  he  and 
we  together  stand  in  relation  to  a  larger  life  or  ideal  com- 
munity which  includes  us  both.  Such  an  attitude  is  far 
more  than  an  attitude  of  mere  altruism  whether  of  pity, 
sympathy,  philanthropy,  or  social  service.  So  far  Zara- 
thustra  was  right  when  he  scorned  these  so-called  Chris- 
tian virtues.  Said  Tolstoy,  whose  doctrine  seems  the 
very  antithesis  of  Nietzsche's:  ^^ There  is  nothing  to  do 
with  men  (including  our  would-be  enemies)  but  to  love 
them."  This  is  true,  if  we  define  love  after  the  manner 
of  Paul  (in  13  Cor.).  If  we  turn  to  the  Christian  Gospels 
we  must  join  to  the  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son  and 
the  Good  Samaritan  that  austere  saying  of  the  Master : 
'^He  that  loveth  father  or  mother  more  than  me,  is  not 

^  This  appears  to  be  one  good  point  in  an  appalling  war.  Petty  sepsr- 
rate  interests  for  the  time  being  are  swept  aside, — there  is  a  common 
spirit  in  the  national  life. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  391 

worthy  of  me."     "He  who  is  not  ready  to  leave  all  and 
follow  me,  is  not  worthy  of  me." 

A  person  is  a  person,  then,  only  in  the  light  of  some- 
thing more  than  himself,  that  is,  only  through  his  rela- 
tions to  God  and  his  fellow-men.  The  goal  is  a  develop- 
ment in  each  and  all  of  a  holy  will,  but  this  means  a  will 
which  wills  the  other's  good  in  the  light  of  the  whoUj  or  as 
a  member  of  the  whole.  We  may  not  out  of  love  for 
another  do  that  which  will  injure  the  universal  ideal  or 
tend  to  loosen  the  bond  which  binds  all  men  together. 
If  you  are  unjust  or  cruel  or  false  to  another  for  my  sake, 
—  so  one  friend  may  say  to  another,  —  some  day  I  shall 
come  to  doubt  your  truth  and  justice  and  kindness.  We 
have  an  austere  and  beautiful  ideal  to  serve  and  we  must 
be  true  and  loyal  to  that  whatever  else  we  are.  I  find  this 
attitude  expressed  in  a  number  of  prayers,  for  instance 
in  this  of  St.  Augustine :  — 

"Blessed  is  the  man  who  loveth  Thee  and  his  friend  in  Thee,  and 
his  enemy  for  Thee.  For  he  only  loses  none  dear  to  him,  to  whom 
all  are  dear  in  Him  who  cannot  be  lost." 

The  bond  which  unites  the  many  and  the  one  is  a  spirit- 
ual bond.  In  an  earUer  part  of  this  discussion  we  spoke 
of  the  importance  of  the  personal  attitude,  the  attitude  of 
the  friend  and  neighbor.  We  now  see  a  httle  more  clearly 
what  this  attitude  really  means.  For  when  we  have  said 
the  word  :  ''Be  a  friend  or  neighbor,"  we  must  remember 
that  this  is  no  exclusive  affection.  We  can  only  truly 
love  our  friends  in  the  Ught  of  something  larger  than  they, 
that  is,  as  members  together  with  ourselves  of  a  larger 
whole  or  community.  So,  sometimes,  for  a  public  duty 
we  seem  even  to  neglect  our  friends.  But,  to-day,  the 
danger  seems  rather  the  other  way.  In  our  lives  of  count- 
less committee  meetings,  and  social  service  activities, 
there  is  no  leisure  for  real  companionship  and  friendship. 
In  the  second  place,  also,  we  have  always  to  remember 
that  to  treat  our  friend  as  a  person  means  to  leave  him  free 
to  serve  the  whole  in  his  own  way,  not  in  the  way  we  think 


392  THE   DKAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

best.  Thus  we  arrive  at  last  at  the  ideal  of  the  spiritual 
community,  of  the  invisible  church,  the  company  of  the 
faithful  —  that  whole  which  is  a  many  in  one.  St.  Paul 
has  given  a  description  of  this  in  1  Cor.  12 :  — 

"Now  there  are  diversities  of  gifts  but  the  same  spirit.**  Just  as 
the  body  though  it  has  many  members  is  one  —  so  is  it  with  the  life 
of  the  spirit,  "and  if  one  member  suffereth,  all  the  members  suffer  with 
it ;  and  if  one  member  is  honored  all  the  members  rejoice  with  it.** 

Many  have  been  the  Utopian  dreams  which  have  tried  to 
embody  concretely  this  principle  of  union.  The  small 
Greek  state  ^  suggested  it.  In  Athens,  for  example,  the 
greatest  liberty  of  development  was  given  to  the  individ- 
ual, but  the  individual  himself  was  largely  constituted  by 
his  relation  to  the  state  which  was  his  highest  self- 
expression.  Because  of  the  perfection  of  this  diversity 
in  unity,  the  glory  and  heroism  of  Marathon  was  pos- 
sible, —  Marathon  which  might  well  be  an  inspiring  ideal 
for  an  age  of  ease,  luxury,  and  money-getting  like  our 
own.  Plato's  "  Republic  "  gives  us  an  ideal  interpretation 
of  the  Greek  state.  Now  if  the  state  did  really  serve  the 
interests  of  the  whole  community,  then  such  a  state  would 
concretely  illustrate  the  above  principle.  For  instance,  in 
the  matter  of  taxes,  if  the  tax-money  were  actually  used  to 
further  the  best  interests  of  the  community  as  a  whole  and 
not  in  the  interests  of  the  classes,  we  should  not  perhaps 
have  our  present  state  of  tax-dodging.  The  modern 
state  or  city  too  often  fails  to  embody  the  essential 
interests  of  its  citizens. 

For  other  illustrations,  we  may  turn  to  the  prophets 
and  statesmen  of  Israel  with  their  dream  of  the  Messianic 
Kingdom  —  a  spiritual  theodicy  —  which  should  express 
the  life  of  God  in  the  righteousness  and  happiness  of  the 
individuaPs  Hfe;  as  an  instance,  the  poem  of  the  First 
Isaiah,  Chapter  35.  The  thought  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
concerning  the  Kingdom  was  a  development  of  this  idea 
on  even  more  spiritual  lines.     ''The  Kingdom  of  God  is 

1  Lowes*  Dickenson,  **The  Greek  View  of  Life.'* 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS  FORMS  393 

not  meat  and  drink,  but  righteousness  and  life.''  In  the 
marvelous  parables,  we  have  the  story  of  the  dream  of 
Jesus  concerning  the  new  social  order  which  shall  spring 
out  of  the  righteousness  of  the  inner  life.^  So  wonderful 
is  the  spirit  of  this  new  kingdom  it  is  worth  while  to  strive 
and  suffer  for  it,  to  give  one's  all  to  it,  even  to  the  lay- 
ing down  of  life  itself.  "The  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  like 
imto  a  man  that  is  a  merchant  seeking  goodly  pearls; 
and  having  found  one  pearl  of  great  price  he  went  and 
sold  all  he  had  and  bought  it." 

Again  the  little  Christian  communities  (or  churches)  of 
the  apostolic  age  —  bound  together  as  they  were  by  their 
relation  to  their  Master  and  by  his  message  of  good-will 
and  brotherhood  —  were,  in  a  small  way,  a  concrete  em- 
bodiment of  the  unity  of  the  many  and  the  one.  But  too 
well  we  know  from  Paul's  letters  how  speedily  disruptions, 
divisions,  jealousies  broke  up  their  harmony. 

Again  the  mediaeval  church  sought  to  be  a  visible  order 
which  should  unite  the  many  and  the  one,  and  the  Roman 
Cathohc  church  seeks  to-day  to  be  such  an  whole.  The 
church  is  the  depository  of  grace.  Men  are  bound  to- 
gether by  spiritual  conviction  and  by  communion,  by  as- 
senting to  the  dogmas  and  by  receiving  the  rites  of  the 
church.  In  many  ways,  this  church  allows  freedom  to 
the  individual  to  follow  his  own  ends,  as  for  instance  in 
the  foimding  of  orders;  and  so  to  a  great  extent  it  has 
been  successful  in  holding  the  loyalty  of  the  individual 
to  the  church.  Yet  we  know  how  this  ancient  chm-ch 
has  strayed  into  paths  of]  political  intrigue,  has  tended  to 
the  mechanical  and  external,  to  worldliness  and  corrup- 
tion. In  its  absolute  authority  over  the  spiritual  life 
of  the  individual  it  has  persecuted  and  overwhelmed  that 
free  thought  of  the  individual  which  when  at  its  best  is 
the  inspiration  to  spiritual  religion ;  or  it  has  branded  as 
heretics  and  banished  from  the  church  the  more  thought- 
ful and  original  minds ;  and  so  we  may  well  ask  to-day 

1  Math.  13. 


394  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

— will  it  be  possible  for  the  movement  called  Modernism* 
to  be  successful? 

How  far  man  is  from  realizing  such  an  ideal  of  diversity 
in  unity  in  society,  this,  indeed,  we  have  already  noted  in 
preceding  chapters.  The  one  which  harmonizes  the  many 
without  putting  out  their  individual  lights,  remains  an 
ideal  to  our  earthly  sight,  and  yet  reUgious  faith  holds 
that  it  exists. 

In  the  presence  of  beauty  —  in  the  appreciation,  still 
more,  it  must  be  in  the  creation  of  it  —  man  learns 
something  of  the  way  in  which  the  one  and  the  many  may 
be  reconciled  to  feeling.  So  Schopenhauer  held  that  in 
aesthetic  experience  man  has  a  momentary  solace  and  fore- 
taste of  the  final  peace,  when  the  striving  ''will  to  live" 
is  brought  to  rest. 

For  that  side  of  religious  experience  which  is  akin  to  the 
sesthetic  experience,  this  aesthetic  appreciation  and  ab- 
sorption is  perhaps  a  solution  of  the  problem  of  the  one 
and  the  many.  Yet  this  cannot  be  the  final  word  for 
religion.  Even  the  great  mystics  have  had  something 
practical  and  social  about  their  experience  as  an  whole. 
For  instance,  the  founding  of  orders,  the  initiating  of 
reforms  by  St.  Francis,  St.  Theresa,  and  the  rest.  The 
saints  of  the  mediaeval  legends  who  lose  themselves  in 
ecstatic  communion  with  God  are  generally  able  to  make 
converts,  rescue  sinners,  perform  miracles. ^ 

The  higher  religions  are  ethical  and  practical.  This  we 
have  noted  all  through  our  discussion.  Nothing  can 
satisfy  the  finite  individual  but  that  which  is  the  expres- 
sion and  completion  of  his  own  selfhood.  But  what  is 
true  for  one  is  true  for  every  finite  self.  The  goal  of  the 
many,  then,  is  the  one  complete  and  all  inclusive  self- 
hood in  which  their  finitude  is  completed  but  their  unique- 
ness preserved. 

*  I  understand  that  Modernism  as  a  movement  is  to-day  practically 
dead. 

2  See,  for  instance,  **The  Little  Flowers  of  St.  Francis." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  395 

How,  then,  shall  the  finite  self  find  and  unite  itself  with 
the  complete  and  perfect  self? 

We  have  already  seen  that  it  cannot  be  by  the  mystical 
way  of  feeUng  alone,  for  this  leads  to  self-annihilation  and 
absorption.  "  The  way"  cannot  be  the  way  of  individual 
caprice,  for  this  is  anarchy  and  could  not  lead  to  One  Self. 
It  can  only  be  the  way  of  righteousness  and  love.  In  order 
to  carry  out  the  will  of  God  in  human  life,  there  must  be 
one  spirit  J  as  Paul  said,  animating  the  various  finite  aims. 
When  we  ask  what  this  one  spirit  is  —  or  what  is  the  con- 
tent of  the  Holy  Will  as  related  to  finite  existence  —  I 
think  we  can  only  reply  in  ethical  terms.  It  must  be 
stated  as  an  universal  ethical  principle.  The  will  which 
wills  an  ought  or  ideal ;  or,  after  Kant,  the  absolutely  good 
and  free  will  —  is  a  will  which  creates  for  itself  universal 
laws.  In  a  word,  the  bond  of  the  religious  life  which 
unites  the  one  and  the  many  is  a  moral  bond.  All  his- 
torical religions  have  had  their  ethical  aspect.  Confucian- 
ism and  Buddhism  expressed  the  moral  law  negatively. 
In  the  golden  rule  and  the  parables  of  Christianity  it  is 
given  in  positive  form. 

But  now  if  ^Hhe  way  of  life"  is  essentially  the  ethical 
way,  the  old  question  returns  —  How  can  finite  man  ever 
reach  the  goal?  How  can  the  imperfect  many  ever  be 
united  with  the  perfect  One?  For  has  not  our  whole 
study  of  the  ethical  process  shown  that  this  process  is 
essentially  a  striving  for  an  infinitely  removed  goal,  and 
that  to  attain  the  goal  would  be  the  death  of  morality? 

To  find  the  true  self  is,  indeed,  for  the  individual  no  easy 
task.  Youth  yearns  to  devote  itself  to  some  ''cause," 
yet  it  is  not  always  very  clear  what  road  to  take,  and  many 
have  followed  ''wandering  fires."  Then  comes  one  of  the 
older  generation  and  says  to  the  young  man  or  young 
woman  —  "Here  is  a  noble  career  open  to  you,  take  it." 
Or,  "Here  is  a  worthy  philanthropy  needing  workers, 
give  yourself  to  it."  It  is  not  by  any  means  certain,  how- 
ever, that  you  will  find  your  wholly  true  self  there.     "  Neti, 


396  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Neti."  It  is  not  that,  not  that.  For  the  true  self  has  a 
mysterious,  twofold  and  paradoxical  nature.  Yet  the 
law  of  the  road  is  a  perfectly  clear  and  simple  one.  It  is 
a  twofold  principle  and  it  is  in  correspondence  with  the 
two  elements  or  phases  of  the  self.  The  first  part  of  the 
principle  is  —  ^'Eoiow  thyself,"  as  the  old  Greek  saying 
went.  To  gain  insight,  take  counsel  with  yourself  in  quiet 
reflection  and  prayer,  and  listen  humbly  to  all  the  wisdom 
of  the  past,  then  alone  if  need  be,  and  unafraid  of  the 
scorn  or  shouting  of  the  crowd,  choose  that  plan  of  ac- 
tion which  has  *' warmth"  for  you,  which  appeals  to  you, 
in  which  there  is  some  probability  that  you  will  accomplish 
something,  because  even  apart  from  your  natural  abiUty  the 
interest  will  hold  through  necessary  drudgery,  and  through 
the  difficult  exclusions  which  any  definite  choice  involves. 
And  the  second  part  of  the  principle  is  —  devote  yourself 
to  something  larger  than  yourself.  '^  Bring  your  gifts  to 
the  altar" ;  that  is,  consecrate  them  to  something  which 
is  in  the  deepest  sense  social,  even  if  not  always  obviously 
so,^  and  be  ready  to  sacrifice  yourself  to  this  end.  Young 
people  often  delight  in  sacrifice.  Now,  mere  self-sacrifice, 
indeed,  the  ascetic  cutting  off  of  any  good,  is  not  worth 
while,  but  sacrifice  for  a  chosen  ideal  is  not  a  meaningless 
limitation.  It  is  also  self-expression  and  creative  activity, 
and  he  that  loseth  his  life  for  this  end  shall  find  it. 

If  one  asks  for  a  concrete  illustration  of  self-sacrifice 
applicable  to  our  day,  is  it  too  much  to  ask  of  the  young 
men  and  women  of  the  rising  generation  that  they  shall  be 
ready  to  lead  a  simpler,  more  purposeful,  more  consecrated 
life  ;  that  they  shall  not  be  quite  so  eager  in  the  pursuit  of 
mere  pleasure,  or  so  dependent  on  the  luxuries  of  life ;  or 
so  prone  to  follow  safely  with  the  majority ;  that  they 
shall  renounce  the  thirst  for  making  and  possessing  large 

1  Compare  Marcus  Aurelius,  "Fancy  not  anything  else  in  the  world 
to  be  of  weight  and  moment,  but  this :  to  do  only  which  thine  own 
nature  doth  require,  and  to  conform  thyself  to  that  which  the  common 
nature  doth  afford." 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  397 

fortunes  and  shall  choose  to  devote  themselves  to  those 
more  ideal  professions  which  do  not,  materially  con- 
sidered, pay  as  well  ?  —  If  they  will,  then  we  may  hope 
that  the  age  of  the  great  teachers  and  preachers,  the  age 
of  the  prophets  and  creative  artists  may  come  again 
amongst  their  children. 

This  difficxilty  about  actually  finding  one's  true  self 
comes  to  us  in  a  form  both  theoretical  and  practical.  For, 
as  we  have  said,  the  goal  of  the  complete  and  perfect  self- 
hood which  alone  can  satisfy  the  religious  consciousness 
is  infinitely  removed.  Logically,  we  cannot  sum  an  in- 
finite series,  or  reach  a  last  term  which  does  not  exist; 
and,  practically,  the  individual  who  seeks  perfect  right- 
eousness acknowledges  his  failures  and  at  last  prays  to 
God  to  be  merciful  to  him  a  sinner.  While,  as  far  as  the 
community  life  is  concerned,  we  have  seen  how  the  shores 
of  time  are  strewn  with  the  wrecks  of  social  Utopias. 

In  answer  to  the  objection  stated  above  in  the  first  place 
to  sum  an  infinite  series  or  reach  the  last  term  is  not  nec- 
essary if  the  Absolute  Self  is  a  self  which  wins  immediacy 
of  expression  in  the  interrelated  finite  selves.  That  is, 
if  it  is  a  self -consciousness  of  the  type  of  *'a  self-represen- 
tative system.''  By  a  self-representative  system  is  meant 
a  whole  or  system  whose  elements  can  be  put  in  one  to 
one  correspondence  with  a  proper  part  of  itself.  Such 
a  system  is  infinite.  The  number  system  affords  an  il- 
lustration.^ The  law  of  the  system  being  given,  it  is 
possible  to  develop  to  infinite  variety,  diversity  in  unity. 
Now,  a  relation  of  this  kind  to  the  infinite  self  is  possible 
for  the  finite  self  for  we  know  the  law  of  the  structure  of  the 
whole.  We  do  not,  therefore,  need  to  reach  the  last  term 
to  understand  the  system  as  an  whole.  This  structure 
has  for  man,  as  we  have  seen,  a  moral  character.  The 
plan  or  purpose  as  revealed  to  him  is:  Act  in  the  light 

1  For  discussion  of  the  Self  as  a  self -representative  system,  see 
Professor  Royce,  !*The  World  and  the  Individual,"  Vol.  I,  supplement- 
ary essay. 


398  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

oj  the  whole.  Act  so  as  to  develop  and  further  selfhood 
everywhere,  in  yourself  and  in  all  others.  To  attain  to 
this  attitude,  to  be  sure,  a  change  of  heart  is  usually  nec- 
essary. ^^  Christ  is  not  born  in  Bethlehem  unless  in  you 
and  me.'*  And  man,  as  he  is,  is  only  potentially  a  person. 
He  is  genuinely  a  person  only  through  his  relation  to  the 
highest  ideal  he  knows,  —  to  God.  It  is  the  attitude  of 
consecration  to  this  ideal  which  makes  him  a  person.  The 
task  is  an  endless  one.  The  rebirth  is  not  accomplished 
once  and  for  all,  but  must  be  renewed  in  each  unique 
moment  and  in  each  individual  deed.  To  be  perfect  as 
the  High  and  Holy  One  who  inhabits  eternity  is  perfect, 
is  an  endless,  ever  recurrent  process. 

Whereas  primitive  man  and,  indeed,  not  primitive  man 
alone,  has  sought  through  prayers  and  propitiations,  to 
reconcile  the  Divine  Will  to  his  own,  the  enlightened  and 
dutiful  self-consciousness  goes  the  other  way.  It  seeks  to 
bring  its  own  will  into  harmony  with  the  eternal  purpose, 
to  carry  out  the  Divine  Will  in  the  series  of  acts  of  a  life  in 
time.  It  is  a  moral  process,  but  the  sense  of  realization  in 
so  far  as  at  any  finite  moment  it  is  realized,  gives  the  joy 
and  inner  peace  which  the  mystical  type  of  religious  con- 
sciousness has  always  sought.  '^Brahma,"  says  the  Eastern 
sage,  '4s  joy  and  knowledge."  For  to  view  the  universe 
"  sub  specie  seternitatis  "  is  itself,  as  Spinoza  said,  com- 
munion with  the  Divine.  So  the  mystical  and  the  practical 
experience  may  be  united  and  the  opposition  reconciled. 

Concept  of  Immortality.  —  Besides  personality  or  the 
concept  of  the  true  self  there  is  another  concept  of  re- 
ligious faith  which  seems  to  me  to  unify  these  two  ten- 
dencies, namely,  the  mystical  and  the  ethical  tendencies, 
and,  also,  in  a  sense  to  combine  the  many  and  the  one. 
I  refer  to  the  concept  of  immortality. 

One  can  hardly  analyze  religious  experience  without 
sooner  or  later  coming  upon  the  behef  in  immortaUty. 
To  religious  faith  to  hold  that  *Hhe  momentary  taste  of 


THE    WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  399 

being"  which  this  world  affords  is  all  there  is,  is  to  make 
the  universe  more  or  less  irrational.  On  the  other  hand, 
it  seems  equally  irrational  and  presumptuous  for  the  in- 
dividual to  think  that  any  merely  personal  plan  or  desire 
of  his  own  has  completion  in  another  Hfe,  or  that  he  re- 
ceives any  material  reward  or  compensation  for  what  he 
may  here  have  suffered  or  endured. 

Below  all  the  yearnings  and  strivings  of  humanity,  — 
the  pain  and  anguish  of  the  bereaved  heart  and  of  broken 
lives,  — what  is  the  essence  of  the  idea  of  immortahty? 

The  dream  or  hope  of  immortality  is  found  everywhere 
from  the  savage  to  the  enlightened  religious  consciousness, 
and  various  have  been  the  pictures  of  the  future  state. 
They  range  from  the  happy  himting-grounds  of  primitive 
man,  or  the  heaven  of  singing  and  feasting  of  the  simple- 
minded  of  the  present  day,  to  the  state  of  spiritual  com- 
munion of  the  mystic  saint ;  and  the  practical  life  united 
through  noble  activity  and  self-surrender  to  the  Divine 
Will  of  the  moral  hero  and  martyr.  Immortality  is  bound 
up  with  the  concepts  of  personality  and  individuality. 
It  has  often  been  said  that  we,  the  individuals,  die  and  our 
lives  are  but  pebbles  on  the  beach,  yet  the  corporate  life 
of  humanity  goes  on  and  we  can  live  for  the  good  of  that. 
This  was  the  faith  of  George  Eliot :  —  . 

"May  I  reach 
That  purest  heaven,  be  to  other  souls 
The  cup  of  strength  in  some  great  agony, 
Enkindle  generous  ardor,  feed  pure  love. 
Be  the  sweet  presence  of  a  good  diffused. 
And  in  diffusion  ever  more  intense ! 
So  shall  I  join  the  choir  invisible 
Whose  music  is  the  gladness  of  the  world." 

But  if  each  separate  individual  is  worthless,  how,  we 
may  well  ask,  does  an  aggregate  of  individuals  or  even  a 
community  of  individuals  become  of  worth? 

What  then  is  fundamental  in  this  thirst  for  immor- 
tality? The  motives  are,  it  seems  to  me,  twofold.  Let 
us  consider  each  in  turn. 


400  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

The  first  motive  is  the  desire  to  Uve  the  life  of  the  god 
or  gods ;  that  is,  to  be  as  God.  Thus  many  an  ancient 
faith  has  sought  the  fulfilment  of  its  longing  through  mys- 
tical union  with  the  Divine.  That  is,  the  way  to  immor- 
tahty  is  by  union  with  God,  and  this  union  is  accomphshed 
through  various  rites,  initiations,  and  ascetic  disciplines. 
This  motive  is  characteristic  of  the  mystery  religions, 
so-called.  In  these  cults,  the  initiate,  through  various 
practices  which  are  of  the  nature  of  imitative  magic, 
shares  in  the  trials  and  sufferings  of  the  Divine  Being  and 
hkewise  has  part  in  his  triumph  and  fehcity.  With  Deme- 
ter  in  her  search  for  Persephone,  the  votary  of  the  Eleusin- 
ian  mysteries  fasts  in  sorrow,  and  then  drinks  the  Kykeon 
in  joy  as  Demeter  did  when  her  daughter  was  found. 
Again,  in  the  rites  of  Isis,  which  follow  the  Osiris  myth. 
The  murdered  Osiris  was  plunged  into  the  Nile  and  so  was 
restored  to  fife.  In  correspondence,  the  initiate  is  baptized 
and  thus  made  a  participant  in  the  drama  of  the  death 
and  resurrection  of  the  god.  That  is,  through  taking  part 
in  the  mystic  rites,  he  himself  becomes  the  god. 

The  rites  of  Attis,^  of  Adonis,  and  those  of  the  Persian 
Mithra  cult  follow  similar  lines.  In  each  case  the  purpose 
was  to  unite  the  worshipper  to  the  god.  This,  too,  is  the 
goal  of  Orphism,2  and  the  significance  of  its  ascetic  as  well 
as  of  its  ecstatic  rites.  Through  the  magic  efficacy  of  the 
mystery-rites,  the  disciple  beheld  the  god,  took  part  in 
his  life,  and  expected  to  share  his  immortality.  But  is 
not  this  in  essence  true  as  well  of  Pauhne  Christianity? 
Through  partaking  of  the  sufferings  and  death  of  Christ, 
the  Christian  may  rise  with  him  into  newness  of  life  and 
share  in  the  glories  of  his  fife  in  God  (Romans  6 : 3-11).' 
A  new  element,  however,  enters  with  Christianity.  The 
ancient  mysteries  grew  out  of  rites  connected  with  the 

1  Frazer,  "The  Golden  Bough." 

2  Jane  Harrison,  **  Prolegomena  to  Greek  Religion." 

'See  Alfred  Loisy,  "The  Christian  Mystery,"  Hibbert  Journal^ 
October,  1911. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  401 

decay  of  vegetation  in  the  autumn  and  its  revival  in  the 
spring.  This  is  the  original  meaning  of  the  Persephone 
myth,  and  also  of  the  Attis  and  Adonis  myths.-  These 
cults,  to  be  sure,  had  involved  ascetic  practices  and  to 
some  extent  purity  of  hfe,  but  the  emphasis  is  not,  as  in 
the  Pauline  epistles,  on  the  moral  change  and  regenera- 
tion. The  death  in  the  Epistles  is  death  unto  sin,  the  new 
Hfe  of  the  spirit  is  the  life  of  moral  purpose  and  of  brotherly 
love  and  service. 

The  Ethical  Motive.  —  Thus  we  pass  over  to  the  second 
motive  or  element  in  the  idea  of  immortaUty,  and  this 
motive  takes  a  very  different  form.  It  is  the  longing  and 
practical  demand  on  the  part  of  a  creature,  finite,  mutable, 
yet  striving  and  aspiring  to  attain  perfection  and  comple- 
tion. It  is  an  ethical  motive,  and  it  requires  an  endless 
process  for  its  consummation.  Hence  we  can  see  how  the 
demand  of  the  will  itself  creates  the  time  process.  Man, 
from  this  point  of  view,  becomes  one  with  God  and  divine, 
when  in  his  concrete  life  he  mirrors,  or  better  re-creates,  the 
perfect  life  of  God.  In  so  far  as  the  purpose  of  the  Divine 
Will  is  repeated  in  his  every  deed,  he  is  in  truth  an  incar- 
nation of  God,  the  perfect  image  of  the  Eternal.  It  is  for 
this  ethical  reason,  because  of  the  beauty  of  his  life,  that 
men  have  seen  in  Jesus  of  Nazareth  the  incarnation  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  the  true  ^'Son  of  God."  But  it  is  clear  that 
for  the  finite  to  wholly  attain  to  the  perfection  of  God 
requires  an  infinite  process.  No  finite  will  can  ever  be 
satisfied  with  what  it  has  already  accompHshed.  Because 
it  is  a  dutiful  will,  there  is  always  another  obligation  to 
meet,  and  the  individuaFs  duty  is  his  own  and  no  other^s. 
Hence  the  very  individuality  of  the  will  demands  an  un- 
ending series  of  unique  deeds.  This  is  the  essence  of  our 
demand  for  a  continuance  of  that  which  constitutes  our 
personal  identity.  We  are  truly  one  with  God  and  divine, 
in  the  mystic  ^s  language,  when  we  are  transformed  into 
His  image  by  the  sacrifice  of  our  merely  personal  will  to 
the  unseen  ideal  of  the  absolutely  Holy  Will  of  God.    The 

2d 


402  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

ground  for  our  faith  in  immortality  is  an  ethical  ground; 
but  this  is  the  ground  of  our  whole  religious  consciousness, 
and  it  is  bound  up  with  the  nature  of  things.  In  relation 
to  the  question  of  immortality  no  other  point  of  view  or 
froof  appears  to  be  particularly  relevant  or  important. 
'*The  fulfilment  of  meaning"  is  what  is  essential  to  our 
lives.  The  answer  and  outcome  to  our  particular  desires 
and  aims  we  can  well  afford  to  leave,  in  spite,  perhaps, 
of  '^an  inevitable  sadness,"  with  the  Will  which  wills  the 
good  of  the  whole. 

Immortal  life,  then,  means  hoKness  of  life.  The  lives 
of  some  saints  we  know  already  suggest  to  us  what  it 
may  also  mean  in  the  way  of  increased  insight  and  freedom, 
greater  sanity  and  serenity  of  spirit.  But,  now,  a  final 
question  arises  —  why  in  a  world  of  interrelated  selves 
should  there  not  be  discord  instead  of  harmony?  And 
why  in  actual  fact  do  we  find  so  much  evil  in  God^s  world  ? 

The  problem  of  evil  is  the  great  difficulty  both  for  a 
philosophy  of  absolute  idealism  and  for  monistic  religion. 
One  cannot  hope  to  deal  satisfactorily  with  this  problem 
in  a  summary  fashion,  nor  can  imperfect  human  vision 
ever  presume  to  fathom  the  divine  plan  in  its  details.^ 
Yet  certain  suggestions  which  experience  teaches  us  may 
be  offered.  In  the  first  place,  then,  we  recognize  that  in 
the  time-world  the  finite  selves  are  still  in  the  process  of 
winning  salvation.  It  is  through  the  temporal  and  chang- 
ing that  the  soul^s  wings  are  developed.  Professor  Berg- 
son  has  emphasized  this  point,  as  we  noted  in  his  account 
of  creative  energy  in  its  encounter  with  the  obstacle  mat- 
ter. Many  of  the  evils  of  life  come  from  human  ignorance 
and  wilfulness  and  are  bound  up  with  the  question  of 
freedom.  In  fact,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  there  could  be 
moral  growth  if  there  were  not  something  to  be  overcome : 

*  "  Matto  e  chi  spera  che  nostra  ragione 
possa  trascorrer  la  infinita  via." 

Dante  Purgatorio  iii,  34,  35. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE ITS   FORMS  403 

"Des  Menschen  Thatigkeit  kann  allzu  leicht  erschaffen, 
Er  liebt  sich  bald  die  unbedingte  Ruh ; 
Drum  geb'  ich  gern  ihm  den  Gessellen  zu, 
Der  reizt  und  wirkt  und  muss  als  Teufel  schaffen." 

A  Religion  of  Sorrow  and  Atonement.  —  We  conclude 
that  in  a  world  of  interrelated  wills  and  purposes  such  as 
our  world  is,  there  is  bound  to  be  a  note  of  suffering  and 
tragedy.  In  a  certain  sense  it  is  true  that  the  woe  and 
wrongs  of  all  the  world  are  on  our  shoulders,  and,  vol- 
untarily or  involuntarily,  men  have  to  bear  one  another's 
biu-dens.  In  other  words,  to  fully  interpret  the  data  of 
the  religious  consciousness  we  need  the  spiritualized  and 
universalized  doctrine  of  'Hhe  atonement."  We  cannot 
separate  ourselves  from  our  fellows,  even  if  we  would. 
For  if  we  should  separate  ourselves  from  others  another 
tragedy  is  involved  —  the  tragedy  of  isolation.  "In  our 
relatedness,''  says  Emerson,  ''are  we  strong." 

In  so  far  as  the  rebelUous  self  is  a  rebel  against  the  ills 
and  limitations  of  fortune  or  the  wrongs  and  sufferings 
caused  by  others,  one  has  to  say  to  such  a  self  ^  — ''Truly 
the  temporal  world  is  not  the  creation  of  your  merely 
personal  will,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact  what  are  you  as  in- 
dividual apart  from  the  whole?  And  if  you  accept  the 
unearned  increment  of  the  world's  joys,  shall  you  not  be 
ready,  too,  to  accept  the  burdens  which  accompany 
them  ?"  One  lesson  of  experience  is  that  while  every  sin 
sooner  or  later  meets  in  some  form  with  its  just  retribu- 
tion,^ at  the  same  time  much  undeserved  evil  comes  to 
the  innocent.  The  second  lesson  is,  that  while  the  in- 
dividual may  reach  the  heights  of  attainment  morally, 
the  corresponding  degree  of  happiness  does  not  necessarily 

*  When  Dante  wept  at  the  pimishment  of  the  augurs  and  diviners 
Virgil  said  to  him :  — 

"  chi  ^  piu  scellerato  che  colui 
che  al  giudicio  divin  compassion  porta." 

Inferno  xx,  29,  30. 
2  That  is,  in  the  moral  degeneration  which  is  the  result  of  continual 
sinning.     See  Dante's  symbolism  in  the  "Inferno." 


404  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

accompany  it.^  In  this  our  life  not  every  particular  desire 
is  fulfilled,  not  every  prayer  granted.  No,  we  have  our 
purposes  and  make  our  plans,  which  seem  to  us  very  good  ; 
and,  then,  the  cold,  hard  fact  runs  athwart  them.  Tragedy 
is  born.  Now  the  outcome  of  the  difficulty  involved  in 
these  two  statements  is  the  same.  It  is  the  meaning  of 
the  Cross  of  Christ.  We  read  in  history  how  ^'the  blood 
and  tears  "  of  the  past  generations,  as  in  our  own  Civil  War, 
for  instance,  have  been  freely  given  for  our  redemption. 
For  the  world  is  one  whole.  Each  is  responsible  for  all. 
^'Ye  are  members  one  of  another."  Whether  we  will 
or  no,  we  must  accept  the  common  destiny.  Accept  it, 
then,  freely,  even  gladly.  When  your  plans  are  defeated 
and  your  hopes  turned  to  ashes,  when  the  iron  of  some 
unearned  sorrow  has  pierced  to  your  heart  and  you  are 
broken  with  anguish,  when  your  beloved  friends  leave  you 
and  the  radiance  seems  to  have  gone  out  of  your  life,  when 
the  deep  waters  have  gone  over  you  and  your  soul  is  ex- 
ceeding sorrowful  even  unto  death  —  face  your  sorrow, 
feel  that  God  is  with  you  still ;  reflect  upon  the  evil  which 
has  happened  to  you,  see  if  you  do  not  feel  that  you  are 
face  to  face  with  real  life  as  never  before,  and  if  new  in- 
sight does  not  come  to  you  such  as  joy  never  brought  you, 
—  then  when  your  fife  is  deepened  and  sanctified  by  grief, 
go  forth  with  outstretched  hands  to  meet  your  brother's 
and  sister's  need  and  sorrow. 

When  a  great  sorrow  comes  to  our  lives,  it  serves  as  a 
touchstone  to  prove  the  depth  of  quality  of  our  friends. 
They  help  us  most  who,  having  themselves  experienced  sor- 
row, have  learned  how  to  turn  their  own  tragic  experience 
into ' ^  ministers  of  grace."  With  their  stripes  we  are  healed 
and  win  courage  to  face  our  own  overmastering  anguish 
and  pain,  and  disciplined  by  sorrow,  to  take  up  our  lives 
again.  So,  sometimes,  even  in  the  midst  of  our  disap- 
pointment and  grief,  our  sense  of  limitation  and  lack,  it 

1  The  wicked  flourish  as  the  green  bay  tree  while  the  righteous  beg 
for  bread,  as  the  Psalms  have  it. 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS  FORMS  405 

is  given  us  to  see,  as  perhaps  in  the  mystic's  vision,  how 
even  this  experience,  which  seems  in  itself  pm-e  loss  and  evil 
in  relation  to  our  dreams  and  desires,  may  be  a  stepping- 
stone  for  good,  or  an  element  in  the  universal  life  of  won- 
derful if  austere  beauty.  If  we  have  been  on  the  heights 
and  seen  the  vision,  and  if  we  have  succeeded  in  trans- 
forming our  lives  thereby  —  then  life  will  never  be  the 
same  to  us  again  —  we  have  won  the  "new  life."  This 
is  the  mystery  of  sorrow.  Says  Bradley,  ''Even  our  one- 
sidedness,  our  insistence  and  our  disappointment  may 
somehow  all  subserve  an  harmony  and  go  to  perfect  it. 
The  ends  which  fail  .  .  .  are  ends  selected  by  ourselves 
and  selected  more  or  less  erroneously.  They  are  too  par- 
tial, as  we  have  taken  them,  and  if  included  in  a  larger  end 
to  which  they  are  related,  they  cease  to  be  failures.  They 
subserve  a  wider  scheme  and  in  that  they  are  realized. 
Not,  of  course,  that  every  private  end  as  such  is  realized 
—  it  is  lost  and  becomes  an  element  in  a  wider  idea  which 
is  one  with  existence."  ^ 

In  a  word,  to  summarize,  we  may  say :  First,  the  true 
self  which  unites  the  many  and  the  one  is  a  Self  of  selves. 
It  is  an  whole  of  interrelated  individuals,  it  harmonizes 
the  many  and  various  wills  and  ideals,  for  ultimately  each 
in  its  different  way  is  seeking  the  goal  which  the  complete 
Self  is.  Secondly,  this  whole  of  interrelated  parts  is  a 
social  whole,  yet  in  it  the  individual  wiU  is  not  absorbed 
and  made  naught  as  in  mysticism.  The  fact  and  value  of 
individuaUty  itself  is  ultimate,  and  if  we  let  it  go,  we  are 
shipwrecked.  We  went  in  quest  of  the  Self ;  we  find,  how- 
ever, that  the  true  Selfhood  is  for  tis  ideal.  It  is  a  Self  of 
selves,  a  one  in  many 

"  One  undivided  soul  of  many  a  soul." 

In  fact,  it  is  in  part  because  of  his  relation  to  God  and  to 
other  individuals  that  the  finite  will  has  its  own  unique 

1  F.  H.  Bradley,  "Appearance  and  Reality,"  pp.  200,  201. 


406  THE   DEAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

task  and  that  its  individuality  is  fulfilled  in  the  whole. 
* '  In  Him  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being. ' '  For  each 
serves  the  whole  but  each  in  his  own  way.  Or,  as  the  poet 
puts  it :  — 

"Each  has  his  end  to  serve  and  his  best  way  of  serving  it." 

In  this  way,  the  opposition  of  the  one  and  the  many  is 
overcome  and  the  social  experience  reconciled  with  in- 
dividual experience.  An  illustration  of  this,  already  given, 
is  that  of  St.  Paul :  "There  is  a  diversity  of  gifts  but  the 
one  Spirit."  Another,  in  St.  John,  is  the  parable  of  the 
vine  and  the  branches.  Here  we  have  diversity  in  unity 
and  the  relation  of  the  part  to  the  whole.  As  the  dis- 
ciples of  Jesus  were  bound  together  by  the  spirit  of  the 
Master,  by  his  life  and  death,  so  the  whole  spiritual  com- 
munity is  bound  together  by  the  sharing  in  the  common 
joys  and  sorrows,  and  in  the  taking  of  each  upon  himself 
the  burdens  and  the  services  of  their  mutual  life  as  a  whole, 
and  for  the  sake  of  the  whole. 

But  one  ultimate  question  arises.  If  the  bond  which 
practically  unites  the  many  and  the  one  is  a  moral  bond, 
why  could  it  not  be  expressed  as  an  impersonal,  universal 
law?  This  would  give  us  "pure  morahty,"  not  religion. 
The  answer  is  :  The  absolutely  good  and  self -determining 
will  is  the  fundamental  principle  of  moraUty,  but  a  good- 
will-in-itself  is  an  abstraction.  To  become  actual,  it  must 
become  an  embodied  will.  ReHgion  takes  this  universal 
good-will  —  an  ideal  for  every  man  —  and  embodies  it  in 
the  Holy  Will  of  God.  Thus  rehgion  brings  to  the  stern 
obligations  of  duty  the  joyousness  of  gratitude,  adoration, 
and  love.  As  we  saw  before,  the  inner  and  cuter  religious 
experience  cannot  be  separated,  and  this  is  true  as  well  of 
rehgion  and  morahty.  Morahty,  after  all,  must  have  its 
roots  deep  in  the  constitution  of  things.  The  ultimate 
term  for  rehgion  is  personahty.  The  meaning  and  beauty 
of  life  are  revealed  to  us  in  human  personality.  Yet  per- 
sonahty is  a  mystery.     It  surely  has  the  possibility  of 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS   FORMS  407 

reaches  far  beyond  anything  that  we  know  or  dream  of.  And 
when  we  turn  to  metaphysical  considerations  the  absolute 
self-consciousness  or  spirit  is  the  only  self -explaining  and  ir- 
reducible ground  for  reality.  At  least,  I  can  see  no  other 
significant  criterion  of  what  reaHty  can  possibly  mean  to  us. 

Pure  morahty,  that  is,  a  morahty  based  upon  a  seK- 
determining  will,  a  religion  of  supreme  personality,  and 
a  metaphysical  theory  of  absolute  idealism  —  these  are,  it 
seems  to  me,  three  different  ways  of  saying  the  same  thing. 

All  of  the  higher  rehgions  have  contributed  something 
to  religious  experience  as  a  whole.  If  we  dwell  more  on 
Christian  experience,  it  is  because  to  the  modern  Western 
mind  it  seems  more  inclusive  and  more  vital.  The  en- 
lightened Christian  consciousness  to-day  pictures  to  itself 
the  being  of  absolute  personality  under  the  image  of  the 
transforming  power  of  Divine  Love.  Sometimes  it  is  as 
tender  mother  love  bending  over  the  cradle  of  the  helpless 
Httle  child ;  sometimes  it  is  redeeming  love  going  out  to  the 
forsaken  places  of  the  earth  to  bring  healing  and  joy,  to 
redeem  sinners  —  as  the  religious  consciousness  often 
expresses  it ;  sometimes  as  the  self-sacrificing  love  of  the 
Christ  on  Calvary  who  gave  his  life  for  the  world's  redemp- 
tion ;  sometimes  as  heroic  love  consecrated  to  an  ideal,  like 
that  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  one  who  working  solely  for 
the  Kingdom  of  righteousness  was  ''misimderstood  by  the 
common  people  whose  cause  he  had  espoused"  and  "who 
payed  the  penalty  of  spiritual  independence  by  a  cruel 
and  ignominious  death."  ^  We  have  to  start  from  the 
basis  of  our  own  finite  experience,  hence  our  descriptive 
terms  are  necessarily  anthropomorphic.  Hence,  perhaps, 
we  can  find  no  better  expression  for  our  highest  ideal  than 
that  love  and  wisdom  of  I  Cor.  13,  "The  love  which 
seeks  not  its  own,  which  suffereth  long  and  is  kind."  ^ 

*  Compare  death  of  Socrates. 

2  Compare  the  Gospel  of  St.  John,  Plato's  "PhsBdro,"  third  act  of 
Shelley's  "Prometheus  Unbound,"  last  scene  of  the  second  part  of 
"Faust,"  Emerson's  "Celestial  Love,"  and  Hegel's  account  in  his 
"Philosophy  of  Religion." 


408  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

The  great  poet  of  the  Middle  Ages  has  given  in  the  clos- 
ing canto  of  the  ' 'Divine  Comedy"  another  wonderful  pic- 
ture of  Divine  love. 

"Thus  my  mind  wholly  rapt  was  gazing  fixed,  motionless,  intent  and 
ever  with  gazing  grew  enkindled.  In  that  light  one  becomes  such  that 
it  is  impossible  he  should  ever  consent  to  turn  himself  from  it  for  other 
sight,  because  the  good  which  is  the  object  of  the  will  is  all  reflected  in 
it,  and  outside,  that  is  defective  which  is  perfect  there. 

"Oh  Life  Eternal  that  sole  dwellest  in  Thyself,  sole  understandest 
Thyself  and  understanding  lovest  and  smileth  on  Thyself!  That 
circle,  which  thus  conceived  appeared  in  Thee  as  a  reflected  light, 
being  somewhile  regarded  by  my  eyes,  within  itself  of  its  own  color, 
seemed  to  be  depicted  with  one  effigy  wherefore  my  sight  was  wholly 
set  upon  it.  As  is  the  geometer  who  wholly  applies  himself  to  measure 
the  circle,  and  finds  not  by  thinking  that  principle  of  which  he  is  need, 
such  was  I  at  that  new  sight.  I  wished  to  see  how  the  image  accorded 
with  the  circle  and  how  it  has  its  place  therein;  but  my  own  wings 
were  not  for  this,  had  it  not  been  that  my  mind  was  smitten  by  a  flash 
in  which  its  wish  came. 

"To  my  high  fantasy  here  power  failed ;  but  now  my  desire  and  my 
will,  like  a  wheel  which  evenly  is  moved,  the  Love  was  turning  which 
moves  the  sun  and  the  other  stars." 

Yet  we  must  admit  that  no  one  word  or  quahty  can 
describe  for  us  even  our  own  inadequate  vision  of  the 
''most  High  and  Holy  who  inhabiteth  eternity." 

"Eye  hath  not  seen  nor  ear  heard,  neither  hath  it  en- 
tered into  the  heart  of  man  to  conceive"  the  wonder  and 
the  glory  of  the  universe  in  its  spiritual  reality.  So,  at 
last,  it  is  true  that  the  rehgious  consciousness  takes  refuge 
in  a  kind  of  rapture  of  mysticism  which  seems  to  it  to  be 
enlightenment.  Thought  is  for  a  moment  quenched  in 
ecstasy,  and  there  appears  to  be  no  "other."  And  there 
is  no  other  when  absolute  self-consciousness  is  fulfilled. 
That  is,  there  is  no  external  other.  The  nature  of  spirit, 
says  Hegel,  "is  to  differentiate  itself.  The  universal 
differentiates  itself  into  the  particular  embodiment. 
There  is  a  difference  between  the  universal  and  the  par- 
ticular, yet  there  is  also  identity  between  them.  They  are 
one.    As  the  entire  Idea  in  and  for  itself  brought  forward 


THE   WAY   OF   LIFE  —  ITS  FORMS  409 

into  actuality,  their  difference  is  shown  to  be  no  differ- 
ence, and  thus  the  one  is  at  home  with  itself  in  the  other. 
The  fact  that  this  is  so  is  what  is  meant  by  Spirit.  Or, 
expressed  in  terms  of  feehng,  by  Eternal  Love,  The  Holy 
Spirit  is  eternal  love.  .  .  .  God  is  love;  i.e.  He  repre- 
sents the  distinction  of  Himself  from  the  other,  and  the 
multipHcity  of  this  distinction,  the  sort  of  play  of  this 
act  of  distinction  .  .  .  which  is  therefore  posited  as  some- 
thing abolished,  i.e,  as  the  eternal  simple  Idea.'' 

As  insight  and  feehng,  love  recognizes  then  the  distinc- 
tion and  at  the  same  time  the  identification  of  itself  and 
the  other.  As  carried  out  in  the  life  as  will-acts,  it  em- 
bodies the  command  ^^Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God 
with  all  thy  soul,  with  all  thy  mind,  with  all  thy  strength, 
and  thy  neighbor  as  thyself."  ^  He  is  my  neighbor  be- 
cause of  our  common  sonship  to  God,  i.e,  we  are  members 
together  of  a  spiritual  community. 

From  the  meaning  of  love,  then,  we  get  a  suggestion  of 
how  the  two  thoughts  of  the  good,  that  is,  as  fulfilment  of 
desire  and  as  an  ethical  ought,  may  be  reconciled.  To  be 
creative  of  personality  —  that  is  the  true  end  of  life.  To 
love  the  neighbor  as  the  self  means  to  try  to  carry  out  in 
his  fife,  —  to  get  him  to  carry  out  for  himself  rather,  — 
the  eternal  insight  and  the  absolute  purpose,  the  reaUza- 
tion  of  which  is  union  with  God.  And  this  sense  of  union 
is  the  fulfilment  of  the  rehgious  consciousness  on  the 
aesthetic  side.  But  this  command  may  be  also  expressed 
as  the  categorical  imperative  —  an  absolute  ought  — 
that  is,  as  the  way  that  all  men  ought  to  act.  It  means  to 
reahze  in  the  particular  the  universal  will.  Love  unites 
the  particulars  through  identifying  them  with  the  ab- 
solute whole.  Love,  however,  also  individualizes,  and 
the  distinction  remains  in  the  whole.     It  is  a  many  in  one. 

*  John  15:  **If  ye  keep  my  commandments  ye  shall  abide  in  my 
love.  This  is  my  commandment  that  ye  love  one  another."  The 
good- will  is  the  socialized  will.  See,  also,  the  hymns  on  love  of  the 
neighbor. 


410  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Through  love,  then,  the  oppositions  between  the  aesthetic 
and  the  moral  experience,  and  between  the  individual  and 
the  social  experience  are  harmonized.  Love  also  enables  us 
to  see  how  God  may  be  omnipotent  and  yet  a  person.  A 
person  requires  another,  hence  it  is  said  personality  always 
impUes  limitation.  Self-limitation,  however,  is  a  very 
different  thing  from  external  Hmitation.^  Love  implies 
another  (as  also  do  thought  and  will)  but  this  other  is  at 
the  same  time  identical  with  the  self  —  they  are  one. 

Once  a  poet  sang  of  that  '^best  philosopher"  :  — 

"Haunted  forever  by  the  eternal  mind 
On  whom  those  truths  do  rest 
Which  we  are  toiling  all  our  lives  to  find." 

The  philosopher  in  his  study  meditating  upon  the  nature 
of  reality  observes  the  playing  child  and  says  :  '^And  that 
art  thou,  O  little  child."  Thus  poet  and  philosopher 
aUke  have  seen  the  life  of  the  spirit  revealed  in  the  wonder- 
ful heart  of  the  unspoiled  child  and  have  caught  there 
intimations  of  our  immortal  inheritance  and  destiny. 
And  their  vision  is  the  truth  —  if  in  a  somewhat  other 
sense,  perhaps,  than  they  intended  —  for  what  we  ought 
to  be  and  may  be,  that  we  truly  are. 

1  If  the  centre  of  personality  is  in  purpose,  a  purpose  is  selective. 
It  chooses  and  so  necessarily  excludes  the  irrelevant.  Hence  in  a 
sense,  it  is  limited,  that  is,  self-limited. 


"  There  is  nothing  the  body  suffers  that  the  soul  may  not  profit  by.  .  .  . 

With  that  I  sail  out  into  the  dark ;  it  is  my  promise  of  the  immortal ; 

teaches  me  to  see  immortality  for  us." 

—  George  Meredith. 

"To  know  God  and  to  live  are  one." 

—  Tolstoy. 


CHAPTER  VI 

The  Indwelling  of  the  Spirit 

We  have  been  studying  the  religious  consciousness  to 
discover  its  essence  and  its  value  and  it  is  time  we  should 
bring  our  discussion  to  a  close.  Amidst  the  clash  and 
warfare  between  freedom  and  necessity,  between  spirit- 
uality and  materiality,  in  problems  of  the  relation  be- 
tween the  many  and  the  one,  the  temporal  and  the  eternal, 
the  inner  and  the  outer,  one  fact  emerges.  We  ask  our 
questions  :  for  instance.  Is  man  free,  is  he  bound  ?  I  do 
not  know  if  the  question  is  put  in  that  bald  way.  What  I 
do  know  is  that  man  is  essentially  a  dreamer,  a  possessor 
of  ideals.    He  dreams, 

"...  of  good 
Illimitable  to  come." 

Without  his  golden  dream  of  the  future  we  have  seen 
man's  life  becomes  shattered  and  meaningless.  The  mys- 
tery of  it  is  turned  to  a  '' universal  mystery  of  despair  and 
futility  and  death."  The  ideality  of  religion  was  the  start- 
ing-point of  our  discussion  and  at  the  close  it  appears 
again,  I  think,  as  the  all-pervasive,  basic  fact  of  the  re- 
ligious consciousness.  The  unseen  ideal  haunts  man  like 
a  passion,  he  can  in  no  wise  escape  from  it. 

But  let  us  note  the  consequence  of  this  conclusion.  If 
religious  experience  rests  upon  ideality,  then  it  is  some- 
thing more  and  other  than  mere  feeling.  What  the  nature 
is  of  the  unseen  good  which  man  longs  for,  he  does  not 
perfectly  know.  We  have  seen,  for  instance,  how  ma- 
terialistic are  the  objects  sought  in  prayer  by  primitive 

413 


414  THE    DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

man.  Man  never  knows  perfectly  what  his  true  good  is, 
but  more  and  more  as  he  becomes  ethical,  this  good  appears 
to  him  in  the  form  of  a  Self.  The  fulfilment  of  his  own 
selfhood?  Yes.  But  it  is  more  than  this.  This  good 
Self  is  not  subjective  and  purely  personal.  Each  man 
has  not  his  separate,  special  God.  His  ideal  is  a  universal 
and  perfect  Self  to  which  he  gives  the  name  of  God ;  and 
God  is  the  God  of  all  men.  He  stands  for  a  bond  which 
binds  men  to  Himself  and  through  Him  to  one  another 
as  in  the  prayer  of  St.  Augustine:  '^Blessed  is  the  man 
who  loveth  Thee  and  is  friend  in  Thee.  .  .  .  For  he  only 
loses  none  dear  to  him  to  whom  all  are  dear  in  Him  who 
cannot  be  lost." 

The  being  of  God  and  man's  deepest  ideal  are  one  and 
the  same  thing.     What  further  is  implied  and  involved? 

First :  This  ideal  good,  though  universal,  is  still  my  very 
own.  The  self  sought  is  the  individual's  best  and  com- 
pletest  selfhood.  This  is  true  for  the  rebelhous  spirits, 
the  Cains  and  Zarathustras,  as  well  as  for  the  religious 
saints  who  humbly  accept  the  divine  decrees,  as  exempli- 
fied for  instance  in  the  teachings  of  the  "Imitation"  or  the 
following  prayer  of  Pascal :  — 

"0  Lord,  let  me  not  henceforth  desire  health  or  life,  except  to 
spend  them  for  Thee,  with  Thee,  and  in  Thee.  Thou  alone  knowest 
what  is  good  for  me;  do,  therefore,  what  seemeth  Thee  best.  Give 
to  me,  or  take  from  me ;  conform  my  will  to  Thine ;  and  grant  that, 
with  humble  and  perfect  submission,  and  in  holy  confidence,  I  may 
receive  the  orders  of  Thine  eternal  Providence;  and  may  equally 
adore  all  that  comes  to  me  from  Thee ;  through  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord. 
Amen." 

Or  this  of  F^nelon  :  — ■  * 

"How  does  our  will  become  sanctified?  By  conforming  itself 
universally  to  that  of  God.  We  wiQ  all  that  he  wills  and  will  nothing 
that  he  does  not  will.  We  attach  our  feeble  will  to  that  all-powerful 
will  which  performs  everything.  Thus  nothing  can  ever  come  to  pass 
against  our  will  for  nothing  can  happen  save  that  which  God  wills  and 
we  find  in  his  good  pleasure  an  inexhaustible  source  of  peace  and 
consolation." 


THE    INDWELLING   OF   THE    SPIRIT  415 

Second  :  The  ideal  is  no  mere  dream  or  illusion.  It  is 
a  living,  an  embodied  experience.  Thus  it  makes  its 
deepest  appeal  to  us.  It  is  at  once  human  and  divine, 
son  of  God  and  son  of  man,  as  the  church  has  loved  to 
express  it.  This,  it  is  said,  is  to  poetize,  yet  it  is  the  truth, 
as  deepest  poetry  always  is  the  deepest  truth. 

Third :  There  is  an  unseen  good,  then,  and  this  good 
moves  men  to  action.  For  man  must  get  away  from  his 
present  state  of  dissatisfaction,  of  evil,  or  of  sin.  All 
things  are  possible  to  him  who  beheveth.  When  the 
ideal  becomes  spiritualized  to  man,  it  takes  the  form  of  an 
obligation.  He  must  serve  it  unconditionally.  It  is  an 
ought  which  compels,  and  yet  at  the  same  time  it  is  a  love 
which  inspires. 

Fourth :  Because  he  has  an  ideal,  then,  man  is  active. 
He  aspires  and  longs  to  attain  his  vision  of  good.  He 
strives  for  it  without  rest.  Now  this  activity  inevitably, 
sooner  or  later,  brings  the  individual  into  relation,  for  good 
or  for  ill,  with  his  fellow-men.  If  the  ideal  remained 
purely  individual,  this  social  confrontation  would  lead  to 
anarchy,  disloyalty,  and  the  disruption  of  human  life.  As 
an  universal  or  community  ideal,  however,  it  leads  to 
mutual  discipline,  self-control,  cooperation,  and  also  to 
vicarious  atonement.  The  individuars  good  is  seen  to  be 
a  social  good.  We  have  seen  that  this  was  true  of  the  re- 
ligious ideal  even  in  the  case  of  primitive  man.  It  is  the 
religious  bond  which  holds  the  primitive  group  together. 
The  religious  ideal,  then,  is  a  social  ideal. 

Fifth :  That  man  has  an  ideal  is  ultimately  as  Thomas 
Aquinas  has  said  (see  pp.  164  and  337)  no  merit  of  man's 
own.  It  is  through  ^^  grace  whereby  we  are  potentially 
children  of  God.''  Yet  only  potentially  are  we  so.  To 
serve  the  ideal  for  its  own  sake  can  only  be  by  our  own  free 
choice.  This  means  by  a  decision  on  man's  part  which 
leads  to  a  transformation  and  a  new  birth  into  the  world  of 
spiritual  values.  '^  Sell  all  thou  hast  and  come  follow  me." 
This  is  what  it  means  to  become  truly  a  person,  ix.  one 


416  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

whose  restless,  self-seeking  will  has  been  transformed  into 
a  holy  will — one  who  has  become  heavenly  minded — one 
who  serves  an  absolute  Ideal  —  one  changed  into  the 
image  of  God. 

In  order  to  discover  if  the  essence  and  content  of  re- 
ligious experience  cannot  be  interpreted  in  terms  of  man's 
ultimate  ideal,  one  can  test  it  by  taking  any  collection  of 
hymns  or  prayers  and,  —  granted  that  this  ideal  life  is 
expressed  in  personal  terms,  —  see  if  it  will  not  answer  in 
every  case.  Let  us  make  the  experiment.  For  instance, 
what  are  some  of  the  names  of  God  when  appeal  is  made 
to  Him  in  prayer.  He  is  called  the  *' Remembrancer  of 
Eternity,''  the  '^Master  of  that  which  is  or  is  denied," 
the  "Chance  which  gives  Life,"  the  '^Searcher  of  Hearts," 
the  "Healer."  He  is  the  "Light,"  the  "Strength,"  the 
"Redeemer,"  the  "Helper  of  the  Helpless,"  "The  Ever- 
lasting Pity,"  the  "  Fountain  of  Life  and  Immortality," 
the  "Source  of  Everlasting  Good,"  the  "Deliverer  from 
Foes,"  "Salvation  and  Refuge,"  a  "Tower  of  Defence," 
the  "Eternal  Rock  of  Ages,"  the  "Giver  of  Every  Perfect 
Gift,"  the  "Guide  and  Comfort  of  the  pilgrim  soul,"  the 
"Crown  of  Life,"  the  "Haven  of  storm-tossed  souls,"  the 
"Star  and  Guide  of  those  that  sail  the  tempestuous  seas 
of  the  world,"  the  "Giver  of  Wisdom."  Now,  all  these 
terms  which  men  have  used  in  naming  God  can,  I  think, 
be  applied  to  the  spiritual  ideal. 

We  commune  with  this  ideal,  this  greater  than  self,  as 
in  the  prayers  of  Thomas  a  Kempis,  St.  Augustine,  George 
Herbert,  and  the  Psalms.  We  appeal  to  it  to  pervade  our 
lives  and  to  make  us  consecrated  to  itself.  For  instance, 
as  in  the  prayer  of  John  Henry  Newman  :  "Only  give  me 
and  increase  in  me  that  true  loyalty  to  Thee  which  is  the 
bond  of  the  covenant  between  Thee  and  men,  and  the 
pledge  in  my  own  heart  and  conscience  that  Thou,  the 
Supreme  God,  wilt  not  forsake  me." 

Through  all  the  experiences  of  life  whether  of  joy  or  of 
sorrow,  the  unseen  good  is  constantly  drawing  us  to  itself. 


THE   INDWELLING   OF  THE   SPIRIT  417 

When  we  give  ourselves  to  it,  it  clarifies  our  lives  and  be- 
comes a  light  to  guide  until  we  are  wholly  conformed  to  its 
image,  so  that  the  life  of  love  and  of  righteousness  becomes 
the  very  ground  of  our  souls.  The  heart  which  can  love 
and  attain  the  highest  good  can  be  satisfied  with  nothing 
less.  To  serve  the  ideal  is  joy.  It  gives  rise  to  songs  of 
praise  and  adoration.  When  we  accept  it  as  the  founda- 
tion of  our  happiness,  it  frees  us  from  cares  and  anxieties, 
and  none  of  the  trifling  pleasures  or  temptations  of  life 
can  appeal  to  us ;  but  it  demands  of  us  a  living  sacrifice 
of  our  wills,  a  free  surrender  of  our  hearts.  We  must 
ask  nothing,  reserve  nothing  for  ourselves.  "As  a  deso- 
late soul,  we  draw  near  to  the  Tender  Comforter  as  one 
hungry  and  thirsty  to  the  fountain  of  life"  (a  Kempis). 
"We  seek  Thy  face"  (O  Ideal  Good)  "show  it  to  us 
and  our  longing  is  satisfied  and  our  peace  perfect "  (St. 
Augustine).  When  we  sacrifice  all  to  it,  it  brings  us  heal- 
ing, strength,  and  joy  (Martineau).  It  is  the  fountain  of 
wisdom  which  frees  from  sorrowful  heaviness,  and  gives  us 
to  drink  the  sweetness  of  life  eternal  (Mozarambic,  700). 
"If  we  fly  to  it  in  every  tribulation,  we  shall  be  delivered. 
It  sweeps  away  our  troubles,  lest  being  broken  by  them  we 
should  be  overthrown"  (a  Kempis).  The  ideal  strength- 
ens our  weak  resolutions,  restrains  our  wayward  desires, 
renews  a  willing  spirit  within  ug.  All  are  weak  and  need 
help  of  grace,  —  that  is,  we  need  the  power  and  inspira- 
tion of  the  ideal  life.  "Come  into  my  heart,  and  Thy 
power  shall  be  my  power"  "The  world  shall  be  mine 
when  Thy  spirit  is  in  me  "  (George  Matheson). 

A  good  instance  by  which  to  test  our  thesis  is  Whitman's 
"  Prayer  of  Columbus." 

"O  I  am  sure  they  really  came  from  Thee, 
The  urge,  the  ardor,  the  unconquerable  will, 
The  potent,  felt,  interior  command,  stronger  than  words, 
A  message  from  the  Heavens  whispering  to  me  even  in  sleep, 
These  sped  me  on. 

2e 


418  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

"One  effort  more,  my  altar  this  bleak  sand  ; 
That  Thou  O  God  my  life  hast  lighted, 
With  ray  of  light,  steady,  ineffable,  vouchsafed  of  Thee, 
Light  rare  untellable,  lighting  the  very  light, 
Beyond  all  signs,  descriptions,  languages ; 
For  that  O  God,  be  it  my  latest  word,  here  on  my  knees, 
Old,  poor,  and  paralyzed,  I  thank  Thee." 

—  From  "  Prayer  of  Columbus,"  by  Walt  Whitman. 

When  we  give  ourselves  to  this  Ideal  Life,  sin  disappears, 
for  there  is  nothing  of  it  left  when  the  ideal  light,  love,  and 
life  fill  our  souls.  Sin  is  not  caring  for  the  ideal  Life. 
It  is  the  turning  of  our  backs  upon  it  when  we  have  rec- 
ognized it.  There  is  nothing  to  dread  in  Ufe  but  the  loss 
of  the  ideal  Good.  At  first  we  give  up  what  has  seemed 
*Hhe  best"  because  God's  will  demands  it  —  but  through 
transformation  this  renunciation  becomes  the  best  of 
gifts  which  one  has  oneself  freely  brought  to  the  altar,  as 
in  the  following  hymn 

"Then,  O  my  Heavenly  Father 
Give  what  is  best  for  me 
And  take  the  wants  unanswered 
As  offerings  made  to  Thee." 

It  is  the  spirit  of  wisdom  to  save  us  from  all  false  choices, 
so  it  drives  away  the  darkness  of  sin  and  ignorance.  In 
the  light  of  the  Ideal  we  reaUze  that  too  often  we  '^with- 
hold that  entire  sacrifice  of  ourselves  without  which  we 
are  not  crucified  with  Christ  or  sharers  in  His  redemp- 
tion "  (Martineau).  The  Ideal  alone  can  cleanse  and 
renew  the  heart,  purge  the  eyes,  give  the  purity  of  heart 
which  only  can  receive  its  inspiration.  When  our  hearts 
are  fixed  in  unbroken  communion  with  it,  the  storms  of 
hfe  will  pass  over  us,  and  not  shake  our  inner  peace. 
"And  if  Thy  consolation  be  wanting,  let  Thy  will  in  just 
trial  of  me  be  unto  me  the  greatest  comfort  '^  (a  Kempis). 
It  inspires  us  to  social  activity.  (See  the  various  social 
hymns,  etc.) 

Concentration  upon  the  Ideal  as  in  prayer  and  in  medi- 


THE    INDWELLING   OF   THE    SPIRIT  419 

tation  leads  to  a  clearer  vision  of  things  eternal,  —  to 
*' enlightenment,"  as  the  Buddhist  calls  it.  Such  con- 
centration brings  about  a  repression  of  wandering  thoughts 
and  merely  personal  desires.  In  the  light  of  it  we  recog- 
nize the  horror  of  our  own  sin.  '^Unable  to  be  altogether 
like  Thee,  we  need  thy  forgiveness  "  (Thomas  a  Kempis). 
''The  Holy  Spirit  will  lead  us  forth  into  the  land  of  right- 
eousness. It  will  give  us  the  peace  which  passeth  under- 
standing. It  may  be  by  the  way  of  sorrow,  yet  it  brings 
us  inward  comfort,  for  it  teaches  us  that  '  our  light  afflic- 
tion which  is  but  for  a  moment,  worketh  for  us  a  more 
eternal  weight  of  glory.  ^  It  leads  us  by  a  way  that  is 
not  ours  till  all  'self-will  and  contrariness'  are  overcome, 
'all  evil  passions  and  unholy  desires'  subdued,  till  we 
come  at  last  to  the  sublime  state  of  wilhng  obedience  to 
the  highest  good." 

"Lord,  I  fling  myself  with  all  my  weakness  and  misery 
into  Thy  ever-open  arms.  I  know  that  I  am  ignorant  and 
much  mistaken  about  myself.  Thou,  who  seest  in  very 
truth,  look  mercifully  on  me.  Lay  Thy  healing  hand 
upon  my  wounds.  Pour  the  life-giving  balm  of  Thy  love 
into  my  heart.  Do  for  me  what  I  have  not  the  courage  to 
do  for  myself.  Save  me  in  spite  of  myself.  May  I  be 
Thine;  wholly  Thine,  and,  at  all  costs,  Thine.  In  hu- 
miliation, in  poverty,  in  suffering,  in  self-abnegation, 
Thine.  Thine  in  the  way  Thou  knowest  to  be  most  fit- 
ting, in  order  that  Thou  mightest  be  now  and  ever  mine.'' 

We  must,  however,  as  the  last  prayer  suggests,  give 
in  the  end  to  our  ideal  personal  embodiment,  if  it  is  to 
satisfy.  No  abstract  moral  law  however  sublime  can  take 
the  place  to  human  souls  of  that  eternal  Being,  loving 
Father,  divine  Friend,  Great  Companion,  expressed  in 
such  prayers  as  the  following  of  St.  Augustine :  — 

"O  Lord,  my  God,  Light  of  the  blind  and  Strength  of  the  weak; 
yea,  also,  Light  of  those  that  see,  and  Strength  of  the  strong ;  hearken 
unto  my  soul,  and  hear  it  crying  out  of  the  depths. 

*'0  Lord,  help  us  to  turn  and  seek  Thee;  for  Thou  hast  not  for- 


420  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

saken  Thy  creatures  as  we  have  forsaken  Thee,  our  Creator.  Let 
us  turn  and  seek  Thee,  for  we  know  Thou  art  here  in  our  hearts,  when 
we  confess  to  Thee,  when  we  cast  ourselves  upon  Thee,  and  weep  in 
Thy  bosom,  after  all  our  rugged  ways ;  and  Thou  dost  gently  wipe 
away  our  tears,  and  we  weep  the  more  for  joy ;  because,  Lord,  Thou, 
who  madest  us,  dost  remake  and  comfort  us. 

"Hear,  Lord,  my  prayer,  and  grant  that  I  may  most  entirely  love 
Thee,  and  do  Thou  rescue  me,  0  Lord,  from  every  temptation,  even 
unto  the  end.    Amen." 

It  is  because  this  ideal  life  of  God  has  been  made  to 
seem  to  men  abstract  and  out  of  all  relation  to  the  life  of 
humanity  that  men  have  continually  sought  for  mediators 
—  beings  half  human,  half  divine  —  to  stand  between 
themselves  and  God.  This  has  helped  in  a  way  to  spirit- 
ualize human  life ;  and  yet  it  is  a  wrong  to  the  nature  of 
God.  For  the  life  of  God  is  our  very  own  life  in  perfection. 
This  is  what  the  mystics  have  always  taught.  He  is 
the  better  self  in  each  one  of  us.  Our  lives  are  His  con- 
cern. He  pities  us  as  a  father  pitieth  his  children.  His 
own  being  is  completed  through  our  aspiration  and  our 
choices  of  the  good,  and  in  His  wholeness  and  holiness  we 
find  our  goal,  our  fulfilment,  and  our  peace. 

Is  it  all  an  illusion,  this  experience  of  rehgion?  "Can 
any  good  thing  come  out  of  Nazareth  ?^^  asks  the  doubting 
disciple.  And  the  answer  is,  "Come  and  see ! ''  Give  the 
ideal  life  of  which  rehgion  teaches,  the  test  of  trying  it. 
The  trial  has  been  made  of  it,  and  we  have  the  records  of 
lives  all  the  way  from  the  experience  of  those  lowest 
dwellers  in  the  slums  of  London,  whose  stories  of  con- 
version Begbie  ^  recounts,  to  the  experience  of  such  saintly 
characters  as  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  St.  Francis  of  Assisi, 
John  Wesley,  Martineau,  Brooks,  and  others  now  hving 
among  us,  who  have  told  us  of  their  experience  —  heroic, 
devoted  lives  of  the  active  type  hke  that  of  Dr.  Grenfell ; 
or  of  the  type  of  those  who,  having  learned 

"How  sublime  a  thing  it  is 
To  suffer  and  be  strong," 

1 H.  Begbie,  "Twice  Born  Men." 


THE    INDWELLING   OF   THE    SPIRIT  421 

have  brought  from  their  own  experience  insight,  sym- 
pathy, and  help  for  others^  need. 

But  how  shall  the  Ideal  be  won?  How  shall  we  find 
'Hhe  way  of  life''?  It  seems  to  me  concentration,  self- 
sacrifice,  and  prayer  are  necessary  to  find  and  hold  the 
ideal  life,  hid  with  Christ  in  God.  And  yet  the  way  of  the 
cloister,  so  to  speak,  is  not  the  appealing  or  the  necessary 
way  for  the  modern  man.  ^^Take  me  out  of  the  cloister 
into  the  world,"  said  St.  Francis,  ^'and  the  very  chatter 
and  singing  of  his  little  birds  teach  me  how  God  loves 
his  creatures  and  his  children."  The  popular  way  to-day 
is  the  way  of  youth  and  of  the  open  country,  the  call  to 
high,  adventurous  service  of  one's  fellow-men,  —  a  way 
like  that  set  forth  in  Dr.  Grenf ell's  *^What  Life  Means 
for  Me."  Yet  never  must  we  forget  that  the  Ideal  may  be 
served  quite  as  truly  in  those  seemingly  (but  only  seem- 
ingly) unsocial  ways  of  the  students'  library  and  labora- 
tory, or  the  artist's  studio ;  for  the  real  secret  of  salvation 
is  the  absolute  and  entire  giving  of  the  heart  to  the  Ideal. 
This  is  what  we  find  in  the  stories  of  conversion  cases ;  in 
the  experience  of  mystics ;  in  the  pages  of  the  '^  Imitation." 
It  is  no  half-hearted  surrender  of  our  wills  which  the  un- 
seen Good  demands.  Our  consecration  must  be  perfect. 
'^Sell  all  thou  hast  and  come  follow  me."  It  means  cast- 
ing every  idol  from  the  heart.  It  means  a  transforma- 
tion of  our  values. 

And  so  it  is  true  that  there  is  something  ascetic  about 
salvation,  even  as  the  mystics  say.  We  do  not  realize 
this  when  life  is  easy.     We  cry 

"All  good  things  are  ours, 
Nor  soul  helps  flesh  more  now 
Than  flesh  helps  soul." 

There  is  something  shallow,  is  there  not,  about  our  present- 
day  activity?  So  oftentimes  we  say,  ''Let  us  not  cry 
over  spilt  milk."  We  try,  by  rushing  hither  and  yon, 
to  escape  from  our  griefs,  our  mistakes,  and  our  sins.    We 


422  THE    DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

turn  our  backs  upon  the  past,  but  when  fate,  when  the 
stern  realities  of  existence,  strike  us  in  the  face,  when  life 
is  wounded  to  the  core  and  shattered,  —  then  if  the  soul 
of  man  is  not  to  go  under  wholly,  if  it  is  to  become  spirit- 
ualized by  its  adversities,  then  it  seems  that  whatever  new 
life  is  possible  to  it  can  only  be  one  bound  up  with  much 
remembrance  of  the  things  it  has  cherished  which  must 
rise  Uke  the  phoenix  from  grief  and  ashes.  Solitude  and 
concentration  of  mind  are  needed  for  such  deepening  of 
consciousness,  and  something  is  needed  which  we  may 
call  worship^,  and  which  finds  its  expression  not  only  in 
soUtude,  in  the  inner  sanctuary  of  the  heart,  but  also  in 
outer  forms  of  public  worship.  The  external  forms  and 
institutions  of  religion  are  a  natural  expression  of  common 
thought  and  feeling,  and  if  public  worship  is  a  means  for 
the  refreshment  and  re-creation  of  the  spiritual  Hfe  of  the 
individual,  —  spiritual  catharsis,  —  it  also  serves,  as  we 
have  seen  (Inner  and  Outer,  Chap.  IV  Cont.)y  to  revivify 
and  rekindle  the  fire  of  the  spiritual  life  of  the  community, 
the  enthusiasm  upon  which  the  active  life  depends.  If  to 
work  together  for  a  great  common  cause  is  the  best  means 
of  permanently  binding  a  community  into  one,  still  to 
feel  together  the  common  aspiration  to  the  spiritual  life 
(or  cause), — as  those  may  feel  who  pray  together  at  the 
same  altar,  or  sing  together  the  songs  of  the  church,  the 
songs  of  love  and  sorrow,  of  victory  and  redemption,  — 
may  be  the  best  means  of  stimulating  the  love  of  the 
spiritual  cause,  and  without  this  enthusiasm  we  shall 
have  in  the  end  but  half-hearted  and  ineffective  activity. 
Granted,  then,  the  ideality  of  religious  experience,  and 
we  may  say  that  all  the  rest  —  i.e.  the  other  elements  — 
inevitably  follows.  Has  man  a  vision  of  an  unseen  good  ? 
Then  his  present  state  seems  to  him  evil  —  a  dissatis- 
faction, an  incompletion,  a  state  of  lack  and  need.  Has 
his  ideal  good  come  to  take  an  ethical,  that  is,  a  spiritual, 
form  ?  Then  his  failure  to  attain  the  good  self  will  seem 
to  him  a  state  of  sin  which  will  give  him  unrest  and  an- 


THE    INDWELLING   OF   THE    SPIRIT  423 

guish,  and  spur  him  to  seek  for  salvation.  "Out  of  the 
depths  have  I  cried  unto  Thee.''  Out  of  his  vision  and 
his  need  arises  the  impulse  to  the  Way  of  Life,  to  the  con- 
sideration of  which  so  many  pages  of  this  essay  have  been 
devoted.  The  Way  of  Life,  as  we  have  seen,  is  not  one 
simple  way  as  far  as  concerns  its  particular  form.  The 
way  of  salvation  varies  hke  human  nature  itself,  and  much 
depends  on  temperament ;  and  in  a  world  of  interrelated 
beings  it  develops  all  sorts  of  oppositions.  We  have  seen 
in  every  instance  which  we  have  considered,  that  neither 
side  of  the  opposition  has  the  whole  truth.  The  great 
word  is  the  "togetherness"  of  the  experience.  For  in- 
stance, man's  life  is  at  once  temporal  and  eternal.  For 
the  ideal  Ufe  can  and  must  be  lived  in  the  midst  of  the 
world,  and  we  may  learn  its  meaning  best  in  everyday 
experience,  for  "every  path  of  life  temporal  may  be  the 
straight  and  narrow  way  which  leadeth  unto  life  eternal." 
(Roman  Breviary.)  True  religion  is  a  thing  of  the  inner 
Hfe.  Yet  it  cannot  survive  without  the  outer  forms. 
On  the  one  hand,  we  have  this  from  Tauler:  "Behold, 
dear  friend,  if  thou  shouldest  spend  all  thy  years  in  run- 
ning from  church  to  church,  thou  must  look  for  and  re- 
ceive help  from  withirij  or  thou  wilt  never  come  to  any 
good."  And  on  the  other  hand,  the  following  from  "Au- 
rora Leigh"  :  — 

"  Without  the  spiritual  observe,  the  natural  is  impossible ;  no  form, 
no  motion ; 
Without  the  sensuous,  spiritual  is  inappreciable,  —  no  beauty,  no 
power." 

Man  is  at  once  saved  by  grace  and  by  his  own  free  choice. 
Only  through  his  own  decision  can  he  live  the  life  of  the 
spirit,  yet  only  because  the  spirituality  of  the  universe 
is  with  him  does  he  succeed.  Character,  it  is  said,  is 
destiny.  Yet  just  as  in  the  case  of  the  temporal,  it  is 
quite  clear  that  no  man  wholly  makes  his  own  character. 
The  individual's  life  is  inextricably  bound  up  with  the 


424  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

life  of  the  community.  There  is  a  moral,  social  order 
from  which  he  cannot  escape.  Those  who  follow  individ- 
ual insight  a,s  against  that  of  the  community,  which  may 
be  higher  than  that  of  the  community;  or  those  who 
follow  wayward  impulse,  which  is  probably  lower  than  the 
standpoint  of  society,  are  alike  brought  sooner  or  later 
into  conflict  with  society,  and  unless  they  can  influence 
society  to  change  its  standards,  both  alike  are  bound  to 
perish.  Literary  instances  of  this  are  Sophocles's  ^' An- 
tigone,'^ Shakespeare's  '^  Romeo  and  JuHet,''  and  ^'Mark 
Antony" ;  and  Ibsen's  Rebecca  West  and  John  Rosmer 
in  '^Rosmersholm."  Finally,  then,  religious  experience, 
like  the  whole  life  of  man,  must  be  both  social  and  in- 
dividual. ReUgious  insight  may  vary  in  either  direc- 
tion from  the  average,  —  the  accepted  standard  which 
is  embodied  in  institutions,  creeds,  and  ritual,  —  yet  ulti- 
mately, religious  life  is  an  instance  of  the  Many  in  One. 
God's  life  is  expressed  in  the  individual,  but  in  the  in- 
dividual chiefly  in  so  far  as  he  is  a  member  of  a  spiritual 
community.  It  has  been  said,  '^He  who  loveth  father  or 
mother  more  than  me  is  not  worthy  of  me,"  and  yet 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  the  ruthless  will,  the  self-seeking 
ambition,  love  of  praise  and  Pharisaism  hidden  behind 
the  "cause"  and  sacrificing  all  to  this  end. 

We  have  our  big  plans  for  social  reform  and  social 
justice,  and  these,  we  feel,  must  mean  justice,  well-being, 
and  opportunity  for  every  man.  And,  thus,  in  our  thought 
of  the  big  task  we  have  to  do,  in  our  haste  and  the  strain 
of  overwork,  we  forget  or  cruelly  wound  some  individual 
who  needs  us,  to  whom,  perhaps,  we  had  been  bound  by 
special  pledges.  We  forget  the  saying  which  had  seemed 
to  be  the  very  root  and  inspiration  of  our  new  values :  — 

"Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it  not  to  one  of  the  least  of  these,  ye  did  it 
not  to  me." 

Must  the  wayside  weed  or  flower  be  trampled  under  foot 
in  our  march  to  the  triumph  of  our  cause?    Our  age  with 


THE   INDWELLING   OF  THE    SPIRIT  425 

its  awakened  social  consciousness  is  really  in  a  hard  plight 
in  respect  to  the  recognition  of  where  its  duty  lies.  It 
sees  how  dependent  the  individual  is  on  his  social  en- 
vironment, how  largely  it  makes  him  what  he  is,  and  seeing 
this,  it  sees  that  it  is  not  the  individual  in  isolation,  but 
the  individual  as  a  member  of  a  community  that  it  should 
serve;  and  again  not  any  one  individual  alone,  but  all 
men.  So,  as  we  have  seen,  arises  the  modern  ideal  of  the 
social  community.  But  when  we  make  our  aim  the  ser- 
vice of  the  social  whole  —  the  community  —  we  must  not 
forget  that  this  ideal  is  not  something  abstract.  The 
community,  after  all,  is  made  up  of  individual  persons. 
How  will  it  be  with  us  when  we  remember  how,  with  our 
minds  all  aglow  with  the  thought  of  serving  the  com- 
munity, we  shut  our  hearts  to  one  humble  individual,  or 
when  full  of  the  thought  of  our  great  work,  we  spoke  the 
cruel,  stinging  word  or  neglected  one  little  hungry  heart 
or  cruelly  shattered,  perhaps  drove  to  madness  or  death 
by  our  indifference  or  misunderstanding,  some  finely 
touched,  sensitive  spirit  with  nerves  as  tightly  strung  and 
vibrant  as  the  strings  of  a  violin  ?  It  was  seemingly  such 
a  Httle  thing  we  did,  or  neglected  to  do,  and  yet  it  may 
have  made  a  whole  world  of  difference  to  the  other.  It 
may  have  been  the  last  drop  in  the  cup,  the  last  straw 
which  caused  some  sad  and  lonely  heart  to  break.  To-day 
when  so  great  a  readjustment  of  values  is  going  on,  it  is 
a  serious  problem  to  the  individual  to  find  his  place  in 
the  social  whole.  It  seems  as  if  in  the  process  of  re- 
adjustment some  lives  were  bound  to  meet  with  the 
failure  of  their  individual  ends,  and  to  be,  as  it  were, 
instances  of  either  voluntary  or  involuntary  vicarious 
atonement.  It  is  difficult,  therefore,  in  concrete  cases  for 
the  individual  to  discover  his  right  course.  Who  will  show 
us  the  Way  of  Life?  Yet  the  individual  is  sure  of  his  end 
and  he  may  be  sure  that  his  motives  are  pure.  He  may 
be  sure,  if  he  will,  that  he  is  not  in  social  service  seeking 
personal  aggrandizement,  popularity,  and  social  prestige. 


426  THE   DBAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

To  create  personality,  to  aid  in  the  growth  and  the  de- 
velopment of  unique  individuality  everywhere  in  the 
spiritual  community,  and  as  a  member  of  it :  this  is  man^s 
task  and  also  it  is  his  goal ;  and  if  we  should  win  all  wealth 
and  social  distinction,  if  we  should  have  all  power  and 
renown  and  yet  have  failed  when  we  saw  it,  —  when  it 
came  in  our  way  to  help  to  true  selfhood  the  least  of  our 
brethren  (and  we  may  sin  in  this  way  quite  as  much  by 
our  own  attitude  of  lack  of  restraint  in  the  expression  of 
our  own  individuality  as  by  failure  in  positive  service),^ 
it  is  true  of  us  that  we  have  not  love  and  are  nothing. 

'*  Flame  beaten  to  ash  by  the  too  fierce  wind  of  a  day ; 
Flower  torn  at  the  roots,  ere  noontide  drooping  gray ; 

"Flower  of  a  surging  soul,  laughing  flame  of  a  life  — 
But  the  laughter  and  song,  where  are  they?     Lost  in  that  sore  wind- 
strife. 

"Pray  to  the  souls  of  men,  ere  the  new  day  rises  in  power 
Pray  to  the  souls  of  men :  'Forget  not  the  flame  and  the  flower.' " 

If  it  has  been  ours  to  cause  any  such  wrong,  I  am  afraid 
that  in  the  light  of  that  irrevocable  past,  there  is  nothing 
left  for  us  but  the  FooPs  prayer:  — 

"Oh  God  be  merciful  to  me,  a  fool !" 

It  is  also  true,  however,  that  if  we  love  and  appreciate  the 
individual  in  the  light  of  the  highest  ideal,  we  may  hold  him 
worthy  to  be  a  sacrifice  to  its  fulfilment;  and  he  may 
come  himself  freely  to  accept  the  sacrifice  of  his  individual 
ends,  and  it  may  be  to  hun  a  glory,  for  the  Ideal  is  uni- 
versal and  it  may  become  his  own. 

As  we  saw  in  the  last  chapter,  the  union  of  the  many  in 
the  one  in  a  spiritual  community  is  best  accomplished 
when  every  man  serves  a  universal  ideal,  but  serves  it  in 
his  own  individual  way,  and  when  he  helps  all  the  other 
individuals  with  whom  his  life  is  bound  up,  to  serve  in 
their  own  unique  way. 

1  See  "The  Atoning  Life,"  Chapter  I,  by  Henry  Sylvester  Nash. 


THE   INDWELLING   OF   THE    SPIRIT  427 

"Every  atom  gives  resistance  not  the  universe  can  break; 
Each  rose-petal  holds  perfection  angel  artists  could  not  make. 

"As  each  white  wave  feels  the  motion  of  the  moon-led  tidal  main, 
Plato  and  the  seven  sages  shine  in  every  human  brain. 

"Each  true  prayer  foretastes  the  glory  saints  and  prophets  burn  to 
teach 
In  my  brother's  heart  enfolded  lies  the  kingdom  Christ  would  reach. 

"Under  every  power  and  passion  burns  the  element  divine: 
If  I  grasp  the  moment's  meaning,  all  eternity  is  mine." 

In  spite  of  the  tendency  of  the  present  day  to  a  religion 
of  prosperity,  efficiency,  and  the  social  welfare  of  a  purely 
earthly  existence,  the  time  seems  ripe  for  a  more  spiritual 
religion,  for  this  religion  of  '^efficiency"  cannot  satisfy  the 
deeper  needs  of  the  human  heart.  It  knows  nothing  of 
the  anguish  of  sin,  hence  there  has  been  nothing  revealed 
to  it  concerning  repentance  and  redeeming  grace.  It  has 
no  inspiration  in  it  when  the  challenge  comes  to  meet  the 
stern  call  of  duty,  no  consolation  for  the  inevitable  losses 
and  limitations  of  life.  Yet,  further,  the  religion  of  the 
future  will  fail  if  it  tries  to  become  pure  ethics,  for  there 
is  another  side  to  man^s  nature  which  demands  mystery, 
the  expression  of  feeling,  ecstasy,  the  aesthetic  appeal, 
personal  relations,  man's  need  to  worship  and  adore. 
But  yet,  again,  a  religion  cut  loose  from  ethics  would 
have  cut  off  the  very  breath  and  essence  of  its  life. 

Thus,  from  the  starting  point  of  the  ideality  of  religion 
and  the  dependence  of  religious  experience  on  an  eternal 
and  an  unseen  good,  the  whole  scheme  unfolds  itself  in 
logical  fashion  as  Hegel  developed  the  whole  spiritual  uni- 
verse from  the  self-unfolding  idea.  But  this  logic  is  no 
formal  logic  of  scholasticism  and  of  modern  Catholicism. 
It  is  the  logic  of  life  itself,  and  true  because  life  is  deeply 
logical.  But  of  course  no  logical  scheme  can  give  the 
passion  and  the  movement,  the  texture,  so  to  speak,  of 
the  warp  and  woof  of  life.  This  is  why,  when  we  have 
developed  our  scheme,  —  as  thought  inevitably  must,  — 


428  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

and  believe  we  have  seen  how  every  element  has  its  place 
in  the  whole ;  when  we  turn  back  to  the  throbbing  experi- 
ence of  life  itself,  to  Ufe's  mystery  and  anguish,  its  tragedy 
or  its  ecstasy,  sometimes  we  doubt  again.  For  there 
seems  at  times  to  be  something  so  irrational  and  valueless 
about  existence.  Man  longs  for  the  rose  of  yesterday, 
which  has  already  turned  to  ashes.  He  tries  to  do  what 
seems  to  him  beautiful  and  good,  and  one  swift  instant 
can  destroy  his  plans  and  dash  his  dearest  hopes  into 
nothingness. 

"Der  Gott,  der  mir  im  Bosen  wohnt, 

Kann  tief  mein  Innerstes  erregen ; 
Der  iiber  alien  meinen  Kraften  thront, 

Er  kann  nach  aussen  nichts  bewegen ; 
Und  30  ist  mir  das  Dasein  eine  Last, 
Der  Tod  erwiinscht,  das  Leben  mir  verhasst ! " 

Against  the  primal  forces  of  nature,  earthquakes,  ice- 
bergs, floods,  man  is  almost  powerless;  and  even  in 
his  own  inner  life  there  is  much  which  relates  him  closely 
to  the  natural  life.  He  is  only  partly  spiritual.  It  is 
difl&cult  for  his  ideals  to  win  the  day. 

As  the  disciples  listened  to  the  teachings  of  the  Master, 
they  felt  the  goodness  of  God  in  the  world.  It  all  seemed 
so  possible  of  realization,  the  perfection  of  the  kingdom, 
the  beauty  of  the  law  of  love.  Then  came  the  week  of 
sorrows.  Jesus  began  to  talk  to  them  of  the  things  that 
he  must  suffer,  and  of  his  death.  Fearful  and  sorrowing 
they  ask  one  another,  How  shall  these  things  be? 

Why,  why,  why?  That  is  the  inevitable  question  of 
the  passionate  finite  heart  seeking  for  a  perfect  good,  for 
as  we  have  noted  all  along  there  are  two  elements  in  re- 
ligious experience  because  there  are  these  two  elements 
in  human  nature  itself.  Religion  rests  upon  an  ideal,  and 
this  ideal  becomes  an  "ought,"  a  moral  obligation.  Yet 
man  is  also  emotional  and  aesthetic.  It  is  not  merely 
"the  instinctive,   habitual   and  passionate  tendencies" 


THE   INDWELLING   OF  THE   SPIRIT  429 

of  his  nature  which  have  to  be  subdued  and  controlled  by 
his  devotion  to  a  spiritual  principle.  It  is  not  alone  the 
'' sinful  self '^  of  which  Paul  and  Augustine  have  so  much 
to  say,  which  causes  the  clash  and  warfare  in  man's  inner 
life.  He  demands  a  happiness  which  shall  be  in  harmony 
with  his  spiritual  life.  His  ideals  must  be  fulfilled  in  con- 
crete reality.  The  crown  of  life  seems  to  him  to  mean  a 
perfect  union  of  his  ethical  and  his  aesthetic  demands  and 
values.  But  in  human  life,  the  realization  of  these  two 
demands  together  appears,  as  a  rule,  incompatible. 

The  fact  of  the  objectivity  and  universal  validity  of 
man's  religious  ideal  I  tried  in  the  last  chapter  to  make 
plain.  It  is  objective  and  universal  because  it  is  a  social 
and  ethical  ideal,  that  is,  it  is  a  value  that  will  hold  for 
every  man.  But  now,  side  by  side  with  the  ideality  of 
religion,  appears  that  other  fact  of  the  religious  conscious- 
ness of  which  the  mystics  have  so  much  to  tell  us,  —  I 
mean  the  fact  of  the  immediate  experience  of  the  divine. 
There  are  moments  when  to  the  mystic  his  dream  of 
blessedness  is  actually  realized.  He  is  in  touch  with  "  that 
which  is."  He  beholds  the  visio  Deij  and  feels  himself 
one  with  God.  And  who  has  not  known  such  mystic 
hours,  when,  seeing  as  it  were  in  a  vision,  we  have  come 
with  passionate  devotion,  bearing  in  our  outstretched 
hands  whatever  treasure  we  possess  to  consecrate  it  to 
some  cause  of  truth,  of  beauty,  or  of  brotherhood, — to  the 
cause  which  seems  to  us  at  the  time  the  highest  embodi- 
ment of  the  divine?  For  the  mystic  all  of  our  opposi- 
tions have  disappeared.  ^^  Day  and  night,"  said  one,  have 
disappeared  for  me  like  a  flash  of  lightning.  I  em- 
braced at  once  eternity  both  before  and  after  the  world. 
To  those  in  such  a  state  a  hundred  years  and  an  hour  are 
one  and  the  same." 

The  difficulty,  as  we  have  seen,  with  this  emotional 
experience  is  to  prove  its  reality  and  objective  value.  It 
is  valuable  to  me,  yes,  but  this  value  is  immediate,  sub- 
jective, fleeting,  perhaps.     It  is  an  individual,  an  aesthetic 


430  THE   DRAMA    OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

experience,  and  this  is  just  where  the  difficulty  comes  in 
relation  to  religious  experience  as  an  whole.  How  shall 
we  reconcile  the  social  and  the  individual  experience  — 
the  mystic  or  aesthetic  with  the  moral  value?  The  two 
values  seem  to  belong  to  different  spheres,  therefore  it  is 
hard  to  subordinate  one  to  the  other.  Our  life  seems,  of 
necessity,  to  be  social,  and  therefore  we  tend  to  give  the 
supreme  place  to  the  ethical  values  and  to  make  the  final 
word  the  ought. 

"Though  love  repine  and  reason  chafe, 
There  came  a  voice  without  reply, 
'Tis  man's  perdition  to  be  safe 
When  for  the  truth  he  ought  to  die." 

This  moral  attitude  carried  to  the  extreme  was  the  out- 
come of  the  movement  of  Puritanism.^  But  these  emo- 
tional tendencies  represent  something  fundamental  in 
man's  nature  too.  Suppressed  in  one  form,  they  will 
appear  in  another  less  normal  and  wholesome.  In  our 
own  day  there  is  a  reaction  against  the  Puritan  ideals. 
Men  seem  to  have  lost  interest  in  '^  duty.''  —  They  have 
not  a  passion  for  spiritual  ends  and  aims.  The  spirit  of 
the  hour  tends  to  sensationahsm  and  waywardness,  to  love 
of  luxury  and  ease,  and  a  disregard  of  social  restraints 
and  obligations.  Thus  it  appears  in  the  anarchistic 
type  of  socialism,  in  the  tendency  to  seize  ruthlessly 
upon  the  goods  of  fortune  and  to  keep  them  for  one's  self, 
or  for  one's  (more  or  less  limited)  social  group.  What 
has  become,  men  ask  despairingly,  of  the  energy,  self-con- 
trol, and  the  purity  of  moral  sentiments  of  our  ancestors  ? 
We  cannot  deny  that  the  aesthetic  tendency  is  individual- 
istic and  anarchic,  and  how  can  man  live  in  an  anarchic, 
anti-social  world  ?  Yet  the  aesthetic  (so-called)  experience 
of  religion  has  surely  a  value  of  its  own,  —  the  highest 
value,  so  the  mystic  claims;   and  without  the  aesthetic 

^  We  may  see  an  historical  illustration  of  this  difficulty  of  reconciliation 
in  the  pathos  of  the  opening  canto  of  the  "Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel." 


THE    INDWELLING   OF   THE    SPIRIT  431 

experience,  furthermore,  we  could  not  have  creations  of 
art,  music,  Hterature,  those  things  which  of  all  others 
seem  to  be  ends  in  themselves  and  the  crowning  expres- 
sions of  human  experience.  We  must  admit,  I  think, 
finally,  the  need  and  the  reality  of  the  mystical  as  an 
element  of  religious  experience  —  that  experience  which 
means  a  kind  of  rapture  of  delight  in  the  universe,  and 
a  sense  that  one  is  in  union  and  harmony  with  the  world- 
soul  —  a  vision  that  through  all  the  discords,  at  bottom 
all  is  well,  —  the  world  sound  at  the  core.  Now,  such 
mystical  hours  come  in  all  sorts  cf  ways.  Oftenest  now- 
adays, I  fancy,  they  come  through  the  stimulus  of  the 
nature-world,  —  as,  for  instance,  the  fiery  rose  clouds 
mounting  upwards  against  the  pale  blue  sky  of  dawn,  or 
the  sight  of  a  swallow  winging  its  way  south,  may  bring 
such  an  experience  to  some  one.  Or,  in  weariness  and 
physical  pain  there  may  come  a  mystical  revelation  of 
the  atonement  —  ^^This  body  which  is  broken  for  you.'^ 
Or,  again,  in  bitter  disappointment,  or  in  sorrow  and 
anguish  of  spirit  may  come  as  in  a  mystery  the  thought, 
as  it  came  to  the  Prophet  Isaiah  (Isaiah,  Chapter  6),  that 
one  has  been  called  and  deemed  worthy  to  be  purified  as 
by  fire. 

What  we  need  is  to  be  mystical  about  our  ethical  values 
and  the  life  of  righteousness,  as  Paul  was  a  mystic  in  his 
thought  of  ^'the  life  hid  with  Christ  in  God'^  and  in  re- 
lation to  the  church  of  Christ  and  the  Holy  Spirit,  that  is, 
the  Spiritual  Community.  We  must  bring  in  the  per- 
sonal note.  Our  ideal  is  God  —  our  spiritual  community 
is  a  community  of  individuals. 

Dualism  of  the  World.  —  The  primtive  mind  looked  out 
upon  the  world  and  beheld  a  duaUsm  and  opposition  in 
nature.  In  the  contrast  of  day  and  night,  of  light  and 
darkness ;  in  the  death  and  resurrection  of  vegetation ;  in 
the  rhythm  of  the  seasons ;  in  the  ebb  and  flow  of  the  tide ; 
in  the  movements  of  the  planets  in  their  spheres, — the 
primitive  religious  consciousness  saw  opposing  spiritual 


432  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

forces  like  the  good  and  evil  principles  of  the  Persian 
Ormuzd  and  Ahriman,  or  the  life  bringer  and  life  de- 
stroyer in  the  religion  of  Egypt.  We  start,  in  our  inves- 
tigation, not  as  primitive  man  with  the  outer  world,  but 
rather  with  the  experience  of  man's  inner  life.  We  have 
sought  to  express  all  as  the  data  of  self-conscious  experi- 
ence, but  we,  too,  find  a  dualism  ''an  other.'' 

In  our  analysis  of  religious  experience,  we  discovered 
as  a  basic  fact  the  ideality  of  religion.  Man's  spirit  is 
creator  of  a  ''beyond  world"  which  is  better  than  his 
immediate  experience.  We  found  that  in  the  last  analysis, 
for  the  moral-social  man  this  ideal  good  could  only  be 
self-conscious  spirit  —  a  Self.  Only  in  this  way,  too,  can 
we  affirm  the  rationality  of  the  universe.  The  Absolute 
Self  is  a  unifier  of  all  experience.  This  is  the  conclusion 
to  which  we  were  brought  at  the  close  of  the  last  chapter. 
Yet,  all  along,  in  every  problem  which  we  have  considered, 
has  appeared  another  than  self-conscious  spirit.  Ulti- 
mately, perhaps,  this  other  is  still,  as  Hegel  taught,  a  form 
of  consciousness.  But  to  finitude  it  appears  as  another , 
something  immediate,  a  hindrance  and  limitation  to  the 
purposeful  will.  This  other  we  have  met  with  in  all  the 
special  problems  and  in  every  system  of  philosophy  ^ 
which  we  have  considered.  In  philosophy,  this  problem 
appears  as  the  problem  of  how  to  overcome  the  dualism 
of  mind  and  matter,  of  nature  and  spirit,  of  reason  and 
intuition,  of  thought  and  the  immediacy  of  feeling. 

In  his  early  work,  "The  Birth  of  Tragedy,"  Friedrich 
Nietzsche,  who  was  then  a  student  of  Schopenhauer, 
sketches  this  dualism  as  it  appears  in  the  world  of  art. 
In  man,  the  artistic  creator,  there  are  two  tendencies  — 
first,  the  Dionysian  tendency  of  passionate,  ungoverned 
primitive  feeling.  Man  is  Dionysos  the  reveller.  And, 
secondly,  we  find  in  man  the  Apollonian  tendency  which 
makes  for  order  and  harmony.    The  Delphic  god  re- 

1  For  example,  the  systems  of  Plotinus,  Bradley,  Bergson,  sketched 
in  the  preceding  chapter. 


THE   INDWELLING   OF  THE    SPIRIT  433 

strains  and  puts  into  form  the  wild  outbursts  of  theDiony- 
sian  horde.  The  '' Inspired  votary  of  Dionysos'^  feels 
his  oneness  with  all  life.  He  beholds  the  vision  of  his 
God;  but  the  Apollonian  dream-world  of  appearances, 
as  Nietzsche  calls  it,  breaks  up  this  unity  into  the  diversity 
of  individuals. 

The  great  tragedy  of  human  life,  according  to  Nietzsche, 
and  the  cause  of  the  '^antagonism  in  the  heart  of  the 
world '^  as  well,  is  the  dualism  of  the  finite  and  the  infinite. 
The  daring  man  seeks  to  overcome  infinitude  ''to  pass 
beyond  the  bounds  of  individuation  and  become  the  one 
universal  being."  He  can  only  accomplish  this  by  a 
crime  against  the  gods.  This  is  what  we  find,  says  Nietz- 
sche, in  the  great  Greek  tragedies,  for  instance  in  the 
"QEdipus"  of  Sophocles  and  in  the  "Prometheus"  of 
iEschylus.     Thence  arises  eternal  suffering  and  tragedy. 

Apollo,  however,  seeks  by  means  of  self-knowledge, 
measure,  and  proportion — the  holiest  laws  of  the  universe 
—  and  by  means  of  individuation  itself,  to  passify  human 
striving.  Art  is  contemplative  and  produces  harmony. 
It  offers,  therefore,  an  escape  to  the  restless,  striving  will. 
"In  the  extremest  danger  of  the  will,"  says  Nietzsche, 
"art  comes  to  save  man."  For  in  the  creation  and  ap- 
preciation of  art,  he  lives  in  an  ideal  world.  "Yet  the 
noble  man"  ((Edipus),  says  Nietzsche,  does  not  sin;  all 
laws,  all  natural  order,  yea,  the  moral  world  itself,  may  be 
destroyed  "through  his  action,  but  through  this  very 
action  a  higher  magic  circle  of  influences  is  brought  into 
play  which  establishes  a  new  world  on  the  ruins  of  the  old 
that  has  been  overthrown." 

And  now,  for  a  moment,  let  us  consider  this  fact  of 
"another"  than  self -consciousness  in  relation  to  the 
special  problems  and  oppositions  of  our  own  study.  For 
instance,  in  relation  to  the  problem  of  the  temporal-eternal 
or  to  the  static-dynamic  form  of  religious  consciousness. 

Each  paradoxical  form  turns  out  to  be  an  epitome  and 
mirror  of  life-experience  as  a  whole.     For  consider :  the 

2p 


434  THE   DRAMA    OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

facts  of  time,  change,  and  mutability  are  among  the  most 
tragic  facts  of  our  experience,  and  yet  these  facts  represent 
the  form  of  the  embodiment  of  our  deepest  ethical  hfe. 
''That  it  cannot  break  time  or  the  desire  of  time,"  said 
Nietzsche,  ''that  is  the  loneliest  affliction  of  the  will."  ^ 
That  it  cannot  recall  the  past  just  as  it  was,  that,  as  we 
have  seen,  is  one  great  cause  of  human  sorrow  and  a  deep 
motive  in  religious  experience. 

"I  have  been  in  the  meadows  all  the  day 
And  gathered  there  the  nosegay  that  you  see ; 
Singing  within  myself  as  bird  or  bee 
When  such  do  field-work  on  a  morn  of  May ; 
But  now  I  look  upon  my  flowers,  —  decay 
Has  met  them  in  my  hands  more  fatally 
Because  more  warmly  clasped ;  and  sobs  are  free 
To  come  instead  of  songs.     What  do  you  say, 
Sweet  counsellors,  dear  friends,  that  I  should  go 
Back  straightway  to  the  fields,  and  gather  more. 
Another,  sooth,  may  do  it,  —  but  not  I ; 
My  heart  is  very  tired  —  my  strength  is  low  — 
My  hands  are  full  of  blossoms  plucked  before, 
Held  dead  within  them  till  myself  shall  die." 

Yet  time  is  the  form  of  the  will.  The  will  creates  the  time 
stream  in  order  to  express  itself  in  a  way  which  is  unique, 
free,  and  individual.  So  the  time  process  is  bound  up  with 
man's  active,  practical  life.  This  we  noted  in  the  pre- 
ceding chapter. 

And  so  it  is  with  the  great  fact  of  mutability.  The  ar- 
tistic, mystical  state  of  mind  craves  the  unchanged  good. 
It  longs  to  hold  the  golden  moment,  to  keep 

"One  fair,  good  wise  thing 
Just  as  it  grasped  it." 

And,  oh,  the  pity  of  it,  says  the  poet,  that  this  cannot 
be!  It  is  because  of  the  tragedy  of  such  experience  as 
this  that  sometimes,  in  some  horrible  moment  of  agony 
and  despair,  men  have  doubted  either  the  goodness  or  the 

1  "Thus  spake  Zarathustra." 


THE    INDWELLING   OF   THE    SPIRIT  435 

omnipotence  of  God,  and  have  come  to  feel  either  that  the 
universe  is  a  plaything  of  a  capricious  Chance,  or  that  an 
ultimate  dualism  of  good  and  evil  powers  (or  a  pluralism 
as  in  the  philosophy  of  William  James)  alone  can  inter- 
pret the  facts  of  existence.  And  so,  sometimes,  men  feel 
their  own  ideals  a  delusion  and  their  devotion,  with  the 
sacrifices  they  involve,  too  high  a  price  to  pay  for  what 
was  but  an  empty  dream.  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  gives  a 
wonderful  account  of  this  state  of  mind  in  his  ''New 
Machiavelli." 

After  his  final  parting,  as  he  supposed  with  Isabel 
Rivers,  the  hero  writes:  — 

"I  wandered  about  that  night  like  a  man  who  has  discovered  his 
gods  are  dead.  I  can  look  back  now,  detached  yet  sympathetic,  upon 
that  wild  confusion  of  moods  and  impulses  and  by  it  I  think  I  can 
understand  oh,  half  the  wrong  doing  and  blundering  in  the  world.  I 
do  not  feel  now  the  logical  force  of  the  process  that  must  have  con- 
vinced me  then  that  I  had  made  my  sacrifice,  spent  my  strength  in 
vain.  ...  It  seemed  to  me  I  had  aspired  too  high  and  thought  too 
far,  had  mocked  my  own  littleness  by  presumption,  had  given  the 
uttermost  dear  reality  of  life  for  a  theorizing  dream. 

"All  through  that  wandering  agony  of  mind  that  night,  a  dozen 
threads  of  thought  interwove;  now  I  was  a  soul  speaking  in  protest 
to  God  against  a  task  too  cold  and  high  for  it ;  and  now  I  was  an  angry 
man  scorned  and  pointed  upon,  who  had  let  life  cheat  him  of  the  ulti- 
mate pride  of  his  soul.  Now  I  was  the  fool  of  ambition  who  opened 
his  box  of  gold  to  find  blank  emptiness,  and  now  I  was  a  spinner  of 
flimsy  thoughts  whose  web  tore  to  rags  at  a  touch.  ...  I  was  afraid 
beyond  measure  of  my  derelict  self.  ...  I  remember  how  I  fell  to 
talking  to  God :  'Why  do  I  care  for  these  things?*  I  cried  —  'when 
I  can  do  so  little  !  Why  am  I  apart  from  the  jolly,  fighting,  thought- 
less life  of  men  ?  These  dreams  fade  to  nothingness  and  leave  me 
bare ! ' 

"I  scolded:  'Why  don't  you  speak  to  a  man,  show  yourself.  I 
thought  I  had  a  gleam  of  you  in  Isabel.  Then  you  take  her  away. 
Do  you  really  think  I  can  carry  on  this  game  (of  political  reform) 
alone,  doing  your  work  in  darkness  and  silence,  living  in  muddled 
conflict,  half  living,  half  dying?  .  .  .'  " 

Then  he  thought  of  Christ  and  his  teachings.  ...  "I  had  a  new 
vision  of  that  great  central  figure  preaching  love,  with  hate  and  coarse 
thinking  even  in  the  disciples  about  him,  rising  to  a  tidal  wave  at  last 


436  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

in  that  clamour  for  Barabbas,  and  the  public  satisfaction  in  His  fate. 
...  He  did  mean  that :  I  said  .  .  .  and  remembered  his  last  de- 
spairing cry :  '  My  God  !  my  God  !  why  hast  Thou  forsaken  me  ? ' 
*0h,  He  forsakes  every  man,'  I  said."  ^ 

On  the  other  hand,  man  longs  for  change,  for  the  novel, 
the  unique.  A  static,  changeless  hfe  is  stagnation.  It 
means  the  sacrifice  of  all  moral  growth  and  social  progress. 
So,  sometimes,  the  spirit  of  youth  —  youth  daring,  ad- 
venturous, scorning  the  old  ideas  which  seem  to  it  dead, 
always  seeking  new  ideals  —  this  youthful  ^'ever-daring, 
ever-hopeful  spirit"  is  called  the  saviour  of  the  world. 
Moral  growth,  freedom,  uniqueness,  individuality,  —  the 
most  precious  facts  of  our  spiritual  life,  —  appear  to  be 
bound  up  with  these  tragic  facts  of  time,  change,  and 
mutability.  So  the  final  word  of  the  latest  philosophic 
thought  of  our  day  —  that  of  Bergson,  James,  and  their 
followers  —  is  this  :  Plunge  into  change  itself  in  order  to 
find  reality. 

The  fact  of  change,  says  Professor  Bergson,^  is  what 
first  drove  man  to  philosophy.  He  sought  for  the  per- 
manent. But  the  permanent  we  seek,  i.e.  the  real,  we 
seek,  is  in  change  itself.  For  the  real  is  not  the  static; 
it  is  the  dynamic,  the  eternally  changing. 

It  is  interesting  to  compare  this  word  of  the  philosophy 
of  our  day  with  the  religious  experience  of  Brahmanism, 
Buddhism,  and  Stoicism,  which  we  have  already  studied. 

All  these  philosophies  found  the  goal  they  were  seeking 
in  an  escape  from  the  flux  and  turmoil  of  the  world  into 
the  sanctuary  of  the  inner  hfe  of  immediate  intuition  and 
the  enlightened  attitude.  But  reHgion  to-day  seeks  for 
permanence  not  only  in  the  inner  world  of  the  self,  but  it 
would  find  some  imchanging  reahty  in  outward  existence 
as  well.     It  can  hardly  be  satisfied  with  the  dictum  that 

1  For  other  examples  of  this  despairing  and  sceptical  attitude,  see 
Edward  Thompson's  "City  of  Dreadful  Night,"  and  Thomas  Hardy's 
"Dynasts." 

2  In  his  lecture  in  Sanders  Theatre,  Cambridge,  Mass.,  Feb.  24, 1913. 


THE    INDWELLING   OF   THE    SPIRIT  437 

change  is  synonjmaous  with  reahty.  For  this  makes  hfe 
appear  as  it  appeared  to  the  poet  Tennyson  in  his  early 
youth :  — 

"All  thoughts,  all  creeds,  all  dreams  are  true, 

All  visions  wild  and  strange ; 
Man  is  the  measure  of  all  truth 

Unto  himself.    AU  truth  is  change :  ' 

All  men  do  walk  in  sleep,  and  all 

Have  faith  in  that  they  dream : 
For  aU  things  are  as  they  seem  to  all, 

And  aU  things  flow  like  a  stream. 

"There  is  no  rest,  no  calm,  no  pause. 

Nor  good  nor  ill,  nor  light  nor  shade, 
Nor  essence  nor  eternal  laws : 

For  nothing  is,  but  all  is  made, 
But  if  I  dream  that  aU  these  are, 

They  are  to  me  for  that  I  dream : 
For  all  things  are  as  they  seem  to  aU, 

And  all  things  flow  like  a  stream." 

And,  again,  if  time  is  the  form  of  the  will,  it  is  perfectly 
clear  that  the  finite,  individual  will  does  not  wholly  create 
the  time  process,  or  bring  to  pass  all  events  in  the  changing 
web  of  life-experience.  For  how  many  things  come  to  me 
which  are  not  of  my  own  choosing  and  which  appear, 
moreover,  quite  independent  of  my  moral  purposes! 
What  of  the  things  which  happen  to  me  when  I  seem  not 
to  be  free  ?  This  raises  the  question  which  we  considered 
in  a  previous  chapter  —  that  is,  the  question  how  far,  and 
in  what  sense,  is  man  free?  We  saw  there  that  man  was 
not  free  in  the  sense  in  which  sometimes  the  rebellious 
spirits  have  wanted  freedom  —  that  is,  not  free  to  follow 
a  capricious  self-will.  We  saw  clearly,  moreover,  that 
man  is  in  a  measure  bound  by  his  inheritance,  by  his  social 
relations,  and  by  social  traditions,  and  that  his  ultimate 
salvation  depends  in  part  on  something  outside  of  his 
individual  will.  Yet  we  also  saw  that  he  is  free  to  serve 
the  ideal  of  a  holy  and  righteous  will.  He  is  free  to  be 
himself  (his  true  self).    He  is  free  to  serve  the  Ideal 


438  THE    DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

uniquely  J  if  not  always  in  the  way  which  his  purely  in- 
dividual will  (self-will)  would  have  chosen. 

As  for  the  things  which  happen  to  us  in  spite  of  our- 
selves, as  we  say,  —  the  things  which  seem  to  us  cruel 
and  irrational,  mere  hindrance  and  limitation,  —  it  may 
be  that  these  things  are  permitted  to  happen  to  us  just  to 
free  us,  because  in  spite  of  oiu-selves  we  have  been  in  bond- 
age to  what  seemed  to  us  from  one  point  of  view  desirable 
—  to  free  us,  that  is,  to  follow  higher  issues.  For  in  order 
to  realize  spiritual  personahty  we  must  be  wholly  free,  not 
bound  even  by  that  which  seems  to  us  very  good,  if  it  is, 
as  it  may  be,  a  hindrance  to  the  life  of  the  spirit. 

As  for  change,  man's  moral  growth  is,  as  we  have  noted, 
bound  up  with  this  fact. 

"From  change  to  change  unceasingly 
His  soul's  wings  never  furled." 

Without  change  we  cease  to  grow,  and  the  end  is  stag- 
nation.^ 

"This  is  the  inexorable  law  of  aU  life  to  which  the  spiritual  life  is 
no  exception  .  .  .  physically,  intellectually,  socially,  spiritually,  we 
must  change  or  die.  This  stern  necessity  to  readjust  faith  to  the 
changing  conditions  of  life  is  the  tragedy  of  personal  experience  as 
it  is  the  test  of  religions  and  churches."  "^ 

In  prayer  man  has  always  sought  for  God's  help  to 
transform  the  world  in  order  to  bring  it  more  into  accord 
with  his  desires  and  ideals.     Yet,  as  we  saw  in  our  study 

1  It  is  certainly  true  that  our  experience  changes,  and  that  the  con- 
sciousness of  time  is  pervasive.  But  the  judgment  of  change  or  of  the 
time  process,  i.e.  "my  experience  changes"  seems  to  me  to  represent 
a  very  reflective  type  of  consciousness.  If  we  reduce  our  conscious- 
ness to  its  lowest  terms,  we  should  have  left,  I  think,  not  so  much  the 
consciousness  of  duration,  as  such,  as  the  sense  of  difference  in  sensa- 
tion. For  neither  the  higher  nor  the  lower  type  of  experience  does  it 
seem  true  to  make  duration  the  absolute  fact,  as  Bergson,  for  instance, 
seems  to  do.  "I  find,  first  of  all  .  .  .  that  I  change  without  ceasing." 
If  we  "install  ourselves  in  change"  to  discover  reality,  we  find,  do  we 
not,  something  more  fundamental  and  spiritual  than  the  mere  fact  of 
change  and  duration? 

2  Professor  Graham  Taylor  in  The  Survey,  Feb.  3,  1912. 


THE    INDWELLING   OF   THE    SPIRIT  439 

of  prayer,  the  primal  and  fundamental  change  can  only  be 
in  the  discipline  and  self-control  of  the  finite  will.  Prayer 
is  answered  if  we  pray  in  the  spirit  of  sm-render  to,  and 
acceptance  of,  the  will  of  God,  and  in  the  serious  endeavor 
to  live  in  the  light  of  our  deepest  insight  into  what  this 
will  is.  Thus  the  attitude  man  takes  toward  the  world  is 
the  fundamental  thing.  It  makes  man  in  a  measure  in- 
dependent of  the  world.  Such  an  attitude  we  have  found 
in  all  the  great  religions.  Buddhism  and  Brahmanism 
turn  away  from  the  world  to  the  enlightenment  of  the 
inner  self.  Christianity  of  mediaeval  times  renounced 
the  world  to  lose  itself  in  God,  but  since  has  returned 
more  nearly  to  the  religion  of  Jesus,  finding  its  task  in 
the  temporal  world,  and  its  inward  as  well  as  its  outward 
peace  there,  while  yet  above  the  transitory  allurements 
of  the  world,  the  strokes  of  chance,  the  decrees  of  fate. 
Stoicism  takes  an  intermediate  attitude  in  the  refuge  of 
an  inner  life  in  accord  with  the  laws  of  outer  nature. 
"Nothing  for  me  is  too  early  or  too  late,  O  Universe, 
which  is  in  time  for  Thee."  But  while  this  attitude  of 
the  spirit  is  the  fundamental  thing  in  ethical  religions, 
the  world  is  always  present  to  which  the  spirit  must  ad- 
just itself. 

Our  special  problems,  then,  show  us  that  there  is 
''another"  to  be  reckoned  with.  The  Microcosm  is  made 
in  the  image  of  the  Macrocosm.  Man  is  a  creature  of 
opposing  tendencies.  In  him  is  found  the  life  of  matter 
and  the  life  of  the  spirit,  the  contrasts  of  the  inner  life  and 
the  outer,  of  necessity  and  freedom.  He  is  the  centre  of 
tendencies  both  static  and  dynamic.  He  is  a  being  at 
once  temporal  and  eternal.  These  various  contrasts 
and  oppositions  in  man^s  life  can,  as  we  have  seen,  be  over- 
come and  harmonized.  Yet  there  are  things  in  his  life 
which  seem  absolutely  contradictory  and  incompatible, 
—  I  mean  that  which  is  exemplified  by  the  ''yes-no" 
consciousness.  We  cannot  say  both  yes  and  no.  When 
we  have  made  a  moral  decision,  there  are  things  which 


440  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

have  to  be  absolutely  cut  off,  and  sometimes  it  seems  we 
have  to  sacrifice  just  that,  which,  from  another  point  of 
view,  —  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  aesthetic  and  emo- 
tional consciousness,  —  appears  to  be  the  crowning  good. 

Our  civihzation  seems  of  necessity  to  be  based  on  social 
moraUty.  The  greatest  difficulty  in  living  the  community 
life  will,  therefore,  be  for  those  instinctively  individualistic, 
those  of  great  emotional  tendency,  for  the  artistic  tempera- 
ment, for  the  men  of  aesthetic  genius,  and  for  that  wider  class, 
who  have  what  Miss  Puffer  has  called  *Hhe  talent  for  the 
aesthetic  experience.''  ^  For  if  I  act  arbitrarily,  if  I  follow 
an  emotional  impulse,  an  individual  interpretation  of  the 
right,  if  I  obey  ''the  inner  light,"  —  and  this  is  what  the 
artistic  genius  does  and  the  religious  mystic  may  do,  —  then 
I  am  hkely  ruthlessly  to  ignore  and  to  injure  the  person- 
ahty  of  others,  and  to  destroy  the  basis  of  trust  and  the 
possibility  of  community  Ufe,  and  from  the  ethical  stand- 
point this  seems  to  be  to  commit  the  ''unpardonable  sin." 
I  must  at  all  cost  of  suffering  to  myself  and  those  dear  to 
me,  be  loyal  to  that  ideal  bond  which  is  the  basis  of  the 
unity  of  social  relationships,  and  the  foundation  for  spirit- 
ual life  in  the  world.  I  must  hold  myself  responsible  for 
my  deeds. 

But  just  this  is  precisely  the  difficulty  for  the  men  of 
aesthetic  gift.  The  artistic  temperament  is  impulsive, 
anarchic.  It  would  sacrifice  all  to  beauty.  Not  merely 
in  vain  for  it  the  lures  of 

"Thriving  Ambition  and  paltering  Gain 
He  thought  it  happier  to  be  dead, 
To  die  for  Beauty,  than  to  live  for  bread." 

The  artist  and  poet  would  sacrifice  even  the  responsibili- 
ties and  relationships  of  social  life.  He  would  follow  his 
own  sweet,  wayward  will,  free  from  life's  obligations  and 
activities.     He  is  essentially  the  vagabond  and  the  wan- 

1  See  Miss  Puffer's  interesting  essay,  "The  Great  Refusal,"  in  the 
Atlantic  Monthly  for  November,  1911. 


THE   INDWELLING   OF   THE    SPIRIT  441 

derer.  Must  we,  then,  with  Plato  ^  banish  the  artist  and 
the  poet  from  our  spiritual  community?  To  do  so,  we 
feel  at  once,  would  be  not  only  to  impoverish  hfe,  but  to 
take  away  the  appreciation  and  creation  of  supreme 
beauty  (even  if  we  could  still  be  social  and  moral),  would 
be,  we  feel,  almost  to  deprive  human  life  of  ultimate  mean- 
ing and  value.  For,  as  we  consider  our  problem  from  this 
point  of  view,  the  work  of  the  creative  artist  (and  SBsthetic 
appreciation  is  closely  related  to  this)  seems  the  thing  of 
all  others,  with  the  exception  of  noble  and  heroic  deeds, 
which  is  an  end  in  itself,  and  that  which  justifies  all  the 
struggles  and  failures,  all  the  anguish  and  tears  of  human 
life.  Without  these  supreme  creations  of  the  human 
spirit,  would  life  —  life  taken  up  with  practical  activities, 
with  buying  and  selling,  with  getting  and  spending,  and 
with  the  mere  reproduction  of  itself  —  would  such  life  be 
of  any  particular  value?  Even  the  life  whose  chief  con- 
cern is  the  welfare  of  the  commimity  seems  to  fail  in  the 
light  of  such  a  possibility. 

But  now  if  it  is  said  the  genuinely  artistic  tempera- 
ment and  the  artistic  genius  are  after  all  exceptions,  let 
us  consider  the  universal  demand  for,  and  the  quite 
common  experience  —  for  a  limited  time  at  least  —  of, 
happiness. 

A  man  has  an  experience  which  seems  to  him  an  almost 
perfect  thing,  then,  suddenly,  as  by  the  swift  descent  of 
fate,  it  is  snatched  away.  He  has,  let  us  say,  a  noble 
ambition  in  some  way  to  serve  humanity,  and  all  at  once 
his  health  fails.  Or  into  his  hfe  comes  one  of  those  part- 
ings which  life  and  death  alike  bring.  As  far  as  he  can 
see,  his  aim  was  an  honorable  one,  his  happiness  pure, 
and  he  cannot  help  asking  in  his  anguish  of  spirit  why 
the  good  thing  should  have  to  go.  Life  abounds  in  such 
bitter  woes  as  the  agony  of  the  sense  of  guilt,  the  over- 
whelming consciousness  of  irrevocable  deeds,  the  tragedy 
of  broken  promises,  of  bereaved  hearts  which  long  to  re- 
1  "The  Republic." 


442  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL    LIFE 

tain  the  immediacy  of  the  good  they  have  known.     The 

world  is  full 

"Of  infinite  passion  and  the  pain 
Of  finite  hearts  that  yearn." 

Now  if  we  could  make  our  final  solution  ethical,  there 
would  be  httle  difficulty,  from  the  theoretical  standpoint 
at  least,  for  we  should  then  say :  The  spirituality  of  life 
demands  the  sacrifice  of  the  aesthetic  values.  The  good 
which  the  instinctive,  habitual,  emotional  tendencies  of 
our  nature  seek  is  not  the  good  which  the  Supreme  Wisdom 
sees  to  be  best.  It  does  not  make  for  the  highest  spiritual 
life.  The  aesthetic  consciousness  is  emotional  and  anarchic . 
It  is  in  some  measure  '*  the  bad  self."  We  must  root  out 
our  purely  personal  desires,  as  Buddhism  taught.  Now 
the  '^ aesthetic  gift,"  the  creation  or  appreciation  of  beauty, 
is,  it  is  said,  an  inner  subjective,  personal  experience. 
Should  we  not,  then,  sacrifice  it  in  extreme  need  to  our 
ethical  demands?  For  the  world  is  ultimately  ethical. 
The  limitations  and  oppositions  of  life,  even  the  destruc- 
tion of  happiness  and  the  suppression  of  the  beautiful,  are 
means  to  the  final  spiritual  victory.     Lifers  pilgrim  asks  : — 

"Does  the  road  wind  up-hill  all  the  way?" 
"Yes,  to  the  very  end." 

Yet  once  again  the  questioning  spirit  returns.  How 
can  we  sacrifice  the  aesthetic  values?  From  the  point  of 
view  of  what  is  *' given"  in  consciousness  these  seem  quite 
as  primitive,  fundamental,  and  ultimate  as  the  moral 
values,  and,  in  their  own  sphere,  of  equal  worth.  We 
beheve  that  beauty  must  be  ^' right."  But  unless  we 
sacrifice  one  value  to  the  other,  we  have  on  our  hands 
a  fundamental  dualism.^ 

We  ask :  Must  not  happiness,  in  the  end,  be  in  harmony 
with  duty?     Do  not  the  ideal  and  the  real  ultimately  be- 

1  This  is  the  problem  of  the  poem  of  the  Book  of  Job,  and  Kant 
touches  upon  it  in  "The  Critique  of  Practical  Reason,"  in  a  discussion 
of  the  relation  of  happiness  to  goodness. 


THE    INDWELLING   OF   THE    SPIRIT  443 

long  together  ?  How  can  God  be  good  and  permit  the  ter- 
rible chances  and  catastrophies  of  which  life  is  full  ?  It  is 
true,  we  say :  '^  Trust  in  God  and  give  yourself  to  Him." 
But  then  comes  the  deep  cry  out  of  the  heart  of  religious 
experience:  '^O,  that  I  knew  where  I  might  find  Him!" 
God's  voice  is  not  in  the  floods  or  catastrophies,  but  in  the 
meaning.  Yes,  the  meaning  is  greater  than  the  tragedy, 
and  so  great  tragedy  may  be  a  catharsis  which  teaches  us 
heroic  endurance.  It  teaches  us  sympathy  and,  if  we  are 
so  fortunate,  we  may  win  through  it  the  privilege  of  ser- 
vice and  a  deepened  sense  of  unity  with  our  brethren. 
And  yet,  in  relation  to  happiness,  the  question  seems  not 
quite  solved.  Is  the  "  order  "  of  the  universe  of  a  type  so 
universal  that  the  private  happiness  of  any  single  indi- 
vidual is  of  no  consequence  in  the  whole  ?  This  was  not 
the  teaching  of  the  Master,  who  said  :  ^'Know  ye  not  that 
not  one  sparrow  falls  to  the  ground  without  your  Father?" 
But  we  who  witness  the  suffering  of  many  of  the  Httle 
ones  of  this  earth  —  what  meaning  can  we  see  in  all  this? 
What  answer  can  we  make,  for  instance,  to  the  bereaved 
mother  whose  lost  child  was  the  passion  of  her  life  ?  It  is 
the  difiiculty  about  immediate  experience.  This  answer 
was  given  to  Mary  when  she  turned  sorrowing  from  the 
empty  tomb  of  her  Master:  ''He  is  not  here;  He  is 
risen." 

Clearly,  a  form  of  that  stubborn  problem  of  the  relation 
of  religion  to  morality  which  we  met  with  at  the  very  be- 
ginning of  our  inquiry,  in  essence  confronts  us  once  again. 

Concerning  the  relation  of  duty  and  happiness,  two 
possible  answers  suggest  themselves  to  this  ultimate  prob- 
lem of  the  religious  consciousness.  The  first  answer  is 
that  in  the  universe  there  is  an  element  of  irrationahty 
and  chance,  —  chance,  that  is,  which  is  something  more 
than  a  purely  subjective  chance  due  to  the  ignorance  of 
our  point  of  view. 

For  instance,  a  tornado,  a  chance  shot,  a  pure  accident, 
as  we  say,  destroys  a  man  of  genius  who  might  have  greatly 


444  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

served  the  world,  and  this  seems  to  us  one  of  the  most 
irrational  of  the  facts  of  human  experience. 

Or,  again,  two  men  may  —  without  thought,  the  one 
of  the  other  —  be  following  aims  which  are  perfectly- 
rational  from  the  point  of  view  of  each  of  them,  and 
yet  the  chance  crossing  by  each  of  the  other's  path  may 
cause  disaster.  Primitive  man  seems  to  have  had  some 
notion  of  this  kind  in  mind  in  his  interpretation  of  omens 
and  dreams. 

The  second  answer  is  that  every  experience  which  comes 
to  us  may  be  a  means  of  self-mastery  and  thus  lead  to 
higher  levels  of  spirituality.  The  "will  to  refrain"  is 
quite  as  fundamental  as  the  "will  to  live." 

"  Accept,  she  (Nature)  says :  it  is  not  hard 
In  woods ;  but  she  in  towns 
Repeats,  'accept' ;  and  have  we  wept, 
And  have  we  quailed  with  fears, 
Or  shrunk  with  horrors,  sure  reward 
We  have  whom  knowledge  crowns ; 
Who  see  in  mould  the  rose  unfold, 
The  soul  through  blood  and  tears." 

For  our  individual  wills  need  discipline  till  they  become 
wholly  conformed  to  the  will  of  God.  This  means  the 
transformation  of  all  our  experience,  whether  of  joy  or  of 
sorrow,  of  all  the  gifts  of  fortune  or  the  strokes  of  fate, 
the  limitations  of  nature  and  the  struggle  against  our 
temptations  into  spiritual  values.  By  freely  willing  this 
transformation  of  om*  aesthetic  values  such  as  "gifts" 
and  "happiness,"  we  create,  it  may  be,  a  new,  if  somewhat 
mystical,  ethical  value. 

"In  sua  voluntade  e  nostra  pace." 

Such  an  union  of  our  wills  with  the  will  of  God  is  the  true 
^^unio  mystica^'  and  the  real  significance  of  the  symbolism 
of  our  Easter  —  it  is  the  New  Life  of  the  Spirit,  and  this 
attitude,  I  take  it,  is  what  is  meant  when  it  is  said  we  do 
our  duty  not  because  we  must,  but  out  of  love.^    It  is  a 

1  The  gospels  and  epistles  of  Paul  illustrate  this  attitude. 


THE    INDWELLING   OF   THE    SPIRIT  445 

transformed  aesthetic  value  which  makes  mere  "happi- 
ness" and  "the  perfect"  of  finite  life  seem  of  small  ac- 
count in  comparison. 

Let  us  consider,  for  a  moment,  these  two  solutions 
to  the  problem  of  the  sesthetic-ethical  religious  para- 
dox. Both  answers  involve  an  element  of  sorrow  and 
tragedy  in  the  universe  and  this  result,  I  think,  we 
may  take  as  final.  Whoever  has  looked  life  in  the 
face  knows,  sooner  or  later,  either  through  his  own 
sorrowful  experience,  either  of  ill  fortune  or  of  the 
weakness  and  waywardness  of  human  wills,  or  he  knows 
through  the  experience  of  his  friends,  or  of  those  whose 
life  has  in  any  way  touched  his  own,  that  life  is  sorrow- 
ful —  and  even  had  he  no  other  experience  of  sorrow, 
he  can  in  no  wise  escape,  as  the  Buddhist  tells  us, 
the  ultimate  tragedy  of  death;  "When  death  comes  it 
is  inevitable." 

Religion  has  often  been  considered  —  especially  this  — 
the  comfort  of  those  who  are  in  sorrow.  It  is  said  if  our 
life  were  always  happy  and  adjusted  to  circumstances,  we 
should  not  need  God.  Our  needs  are  the  source  of  re- 
ligious experience.  We  have  found  another  ground  for 
religion.  I  have  tried  to  show  that  man  is  essentially  a 
creature  of  infinite  ideals  and  therefore  that  he  never  can 
be  in  perfect  adjustment  to  a  finite  environment.  He 
belongs  to  another  world,  and  from  his  childhood  on  he  is 
a  continual  creator  of  a  better  and  happier  world  to  dwell 
in,  i.e.  sl  "beyond  world."  Yet  as  a  final  word,  we  must 
admit  that  no  solution  is  possible  without  including  this 
element  of  sorrow  and  of  need.  The  world  as  we  know  it 
is  tragic.  Like  children,  we  cry  for  our  lost  good.  We 
want  the  past  to  -come  back  just  as  it  was,  and  this  is  im- 
possible for  ethically  free  and  unique  beings.  Memory, 
it  is  true,  can  in  a  measure  restore  the  past,  and  the  power 
of  visualization  and  kindred  faculties  of  the  imagination 
can  bring  our  past  vividly  to  us  again.  And  yet,  it 
has  never  the  quality  of  immediacy  which  the  experience 


446  THE   DEAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

itself  possessed  in  happening,  and  it  cannot  lead  on  to  new 
issues.     It  is  over  and  done  with. 

That  art  which  springs  spontaneously  out  of  the  deep 
heart  of  humanity  has  often  given  expression  to  this 
tragic  note.  Sometimes  one  hears  this  woe  of  all  the 
world  in  primitive  song,  e.g.  in  the  negro  spirituels  and 
in  the  folk  songs  of  all  nations :  — 

"He  who  sleeps  by  the  fire  doth  dream 
Doth  dream  that  his  heart  is  warm, 
But  when  he  wakes,  his  heart  is  cold. 
Didst  thou  mark  how  the  swallows  flew, 
How  they  flew  away  from  hence?" 
Or  this : 

"To-morrow 
The  days  of  gladness  will  be  done  for  me, 
Heavy  and  overcast  my  soul  will  be. 
And  day  will  seem  like  night  to  me 

To-morrow."  ^ 

In  the  prayers  and  even  in  the  incantations  of  simple  folk : 

"Premez  piti4  des  villes 
Premez  piti^  des  cceurs 
Vous  la  vierge,  or  sur  argent." 

And  sometimes  one  sees  this  tragic  element  in  the  face  of  a 
great  statue,  in  the  expression  of  unspeakable  sorrow  for 
the  inevitable  and  irrevocable.  The  tragic  is,  then,  an 
element  in  religious  experience  and  in  the  universe  itself, 
and  there  is  need  in  interpreting  the  meaning  of  human 
life  for  an  atonement  doctrine.  It  is  an  element,  but  it 
is  not  the  whole,  for  out  of  its  profound  anguish  and  out 
of  the  wreck  and  ashes  of  the  past  the  religious  spirit  rises 
triumphant  and  a  new  life  is  born.  For  to  the  religious 
consciousness  the  universe  is  ultimately  divine.  It  is 
radiant  with  the  presence  of  God,  and  this  new  life  which 
rises  out  of  tragic  experience  is  a  life  of  so  much  deeper 
insight  into  life's  whole  meaning  {visio  dei),  of  a  so  much 
more  living  sense  of  the  unity  of  all  life  and  hence  of  a 
deeper  sense  of  brotherhood  and  of  active  charity  toward 

1  Roumanian  Folk  Songs. 


THE   INDWELLING   OF  THE   SPIRIT  447 

all,  that  at  last,  coming  to  see  the  glory  of  it,  the  religious 
consciousness  rejoices  that  its  experience  was  ^^even  so."  ^ 
In  other  words,  we  have  to  change  our  idea  of  what  con- 
stitutes, or  is  the  essential  meaning  of,  'Hhe  good.''  The 
tragedy  then  remains.  For  man  cannot  help  seeing  the 
partial  as  if  it  were  the  whole.  Hence  the  pity  of  it  — 
the  tragedy  for  him.  All  that  is  left  for  him  is  an  act 
of  faith.  His  reason  leads  him  to  the  view  that  there 
is  something  more  real  than  the  passing  moment ;  that  a 
consciousness  which  is  permanent,  good,  eternal  holds  the 
world  in  its  hands.  Hence  man's  idealism  comes  to  his 
rescue.  If  he  could  see  the  whole  in  its  wholeness,  it 
would  be  good,  and  even  the  misfortune  which  chance  has 
brought  into  his  life,  which  appears  so  evil,  this,  too,  is 
a  needed  stone  in  the  building  of  the  great  spiritual  temple 
of  the  world.  For,  as  soon  as  we  begin  to  idealize  our 
sorrows,  we  begin  to  see  life  in  a  new  dimension. 

To  be  sure  at  first  the  '^new  life"  does  not  seem  to  be 
better.  This  we  saw  in  our  special  analysis  of  the  two 
cases  of  sorrow  and  of  sin.  We  do  not  see  how  this  dark- 
ness can  be  better,  for  the  old  had,  perhaps,  seemed  very 
fair  —  and,  often,  when  we  may  have  learned  to  see  the 
place  of  sorrow  and  misfortune  in  the  whole  in  relation  to 
others'  experiences,  should  the  catastrophe  come  to  our- 
selves, when  the  Master  says  to  us  '^Can  you  drink  of  the 
cup  that  I  must  drink  of,  and  be  baptized  with  the  baptism 
I  am  baptized  with?"  we  shrink  away  in  agony  —  ''Why 
just  this  experience  ?  "  we  cry, ' '  Why  to  this  one ! "  ' '  Why 
to  me  !  "  But  our  grief  may  be  our  best  enlightenment. 
This  friend  whom  death  has  snatched  from  me  is  not  far 
away.  His  life  and  mine  are  still  united  and  in  touch 
with  one  another.  So  we  begin  to  feel  the  weight  of 
immortality.  The  immortal  life,  it,  too,  is  close  to  mine, 
not  a  far-away,  dim,  unknown  world.  It  was  so,  out  of 
their  sorrow,  that  the  Judsean  exiles  built  up  the  kingdom 
of  the  New  Jerusalem. 

*  See  especially  St.  Paul's  letters  and  Browning's  poetry. 


448  THE    DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

So  much  seems  settled,  there  is  an  element  of  tragedy 
in  the  universe  of  which  any  final  interpretation  must 
take  account.  So  much  our  two  solutions  have  in  com- 
mon. But  let  us  consider  further  our  two  answers.  In 
regard  to  the  first  answer,  objective  chance  as  an  ultimate 
explanation  of  the  universe  seems  far  from  satisfactory. 
That  answer  at  once  points  beyond  itself  and  raises  the 
question  if  there  be  not  some  more  fundamental  and  in- 
clusive principle  of  interpretation. 

The  second  answer  solves  the  paradox  from  the  ethical 
standpoint,^  yet  it,  too,  I  think,  leads  beyond  itself  to  a 
more  inclusive  and  fundamental  answer.  For  the  aes- 
thetic values  in  religious  experience,  as  we  have  said  all 
along,  seem  quite  as  ultimate  as  the  ethical,  and  our  task 
is  to  interpret  that  which  we  find  as  given  in  the  concrete 
religious  consciousness.  Our  ethical  principle  of  a  self- 
determining  good-will  gave  us  the  basis  for  a  religious 
experience  which  should  be  objective  and  universally 
valid.  But  beauty,  I  take  it,  is  not  mere  subjective 
experience.  It,  too,  has  an  '^over-individual''  value. 
Beauty  demands  an  entire  devotion.  It  demands  the 
inhibition  of  all  activities  directed  to  gain,  or  to  wel- 
fare, which  is  personal  and  limited.  It,  too,  is  social 
in  its  ultimate  intention  for  it  reveals  to  us  life's 
common  interests  and  the  significance  of  life's  ideals 
embodied  in  forms  which  are  emotionally  appealing. 
Beauty  in  its  organic  wholeness,  in  its  harmony,  in  its 
power  to  free  our  lives  from  petty  personal  ends  and 
so  to  give  us  peace,  and  in  its  ability  to  express  for  us 
as  it  were  in  a  vision  a  reahzation  of  our  dreams, — 
beauty,  as  Professor  George  Herbert  Palmer  has  said, 
''sets  the  goal"  which  is  sought  by  the  moral  life. 
Beauty  inspires  us  by  showing  us  an  end  valuable  in 
itself,  an  end  which  does  not  lead  to  something  beyond 
itself. 

^  That  is,  by  transforming  the  aesthetic  value  into  a  kind  of  ethical 
value. 


THE    INDWELLING   OF   THE    SPIRIT  449 

Thus  beauty  in  its  variety  and  unity,  and  in  its  har- 
mony of  inner  meaning  and  outer  expression,  reveals  to 
us  in  image  and  symbol  that  goal  unto  which  our  ethical 
life  forever  strives  to  attain.  Beauty  is  a  true  expression 
of  the  ''many  in  one.'^  Some  movements  of  Beethoven's 
symphonies  and  the  close  of  Dante's  ''Paradiso"  to  my 
mind  come  the  nearest  to  a  suggestion  of  the  united 
ethical  and  aesthetic  values;  but  once  before  we  said, 
however,  that  even  art  fails  a  little  when  it  tries  to  give 
us  a  picture  and  concrete  embodiment  of  paradise. 

Endurance  of  life,  good  as  it  is,  could  never  be  the  final 
word  of  religious  experience.  The  final  rehgious  attitude 
is  one  of  joy  in  the  ideal  life,  in  the  sense  of  security  and 
peace  in  communion  with  God,  and  of  active  union  with 
the  divine  purpose.  This  is  the  essential  spirit  of  the 
Hebrew  book  of  the  Psalms,  that  universal  expression  of 
religious  experience. 

"The  Lord  is  my  light  and  my  salvation; 
Whom  shall  I  fear? 

The  Lord  is  the  strength  of  my  life ; 
Of  whom  shall  I  be  afraid?"  ^ 
"I  will  bless  the  Lord  who  hath  given  me  counsel. 

I  have  set  the  Lord  always  before  me : 

Because  He  is  at  my  right  hand  I  shall  not  be  moved. 

Therefore  my  heart  is  glad,  and  my  glory  rejoiceth. 

Thou  wilt  show  me  the  path  of  life: 

In  Thy  presence  is  fulness  of  joy ; 

In  Thy  right  hand  there  are  pleasures  for  evermore."  * 

"With  Thee  is  the  fountain  of  life,' 
In  Thy  light  we  shall  see  light." 

This  ultimate  expression  of  the  religious  consciousness,  — 
this  joy  in  the  vision  and  in  the  active  effort  to  realize 
its  Ideal,  which  is  the  will  of  God,  —  seems  to  me  to  come 
nearer,  in  a  final  interpretation  of  it,  to  the  aesthetic  than 
to  the  ethical  experience.  Yet  we  must  remember  that 
this  peculiarly  rehgious  attitude  could  not  be  unless  it 

1  Psalm  27 :  1,  2.  2  From  Psalm  16.  » Psalm  36 :  9. 

2g 


450  THE    DRAMA    OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

were  an  expression  of  an  universally  good- will.  It  is  a  joy 
born  out  of  pain  and  realized  only  through  self-discipline ; 
and  just  as  sorrow  is  an  element  in  this  experience  which  as 
an  whole  is  one  of  deep  joy,  so  the  ethical  is  a  strain,  an 
attitude  involved  in  the  religious  experience  as  an  whole. 
But  sometimes  one  wonders  whether  the  moral  qualities, 
such  as  human  kindness,  love,  loyalty,  devotion,  charac- 
ter, heroism,  the  wholly  good-will,  perfection,  heavenly- 
mindedness,  consecration,  do  not  seem  to  us  the  summum 
bonum  of  our  experience  partly  because  they  are  alHed  to 
the  supremely  beautiful.  We  want,  perhaps,  some  inclu- 
sive term,  some  concept  which  shall  include  the  supremely 
good  from  the  ethical  standpoint  with  the  beautiful,  or 
absolutely  desirable.  Such  concepts  as  immortahty,  per- 
sonality, friendship,  the  invisible  church,  the  realized  ideal, 
variously  suggest  to  us  how  such  an  union  is  possible. 
Beauty  is  a  perfect  whole  and  the  spiritual  life  in  its 
wholeness  is  beautiful.  Beauty,  it  is  often  said,  exists  in 
isolation,  and  an  absorption  in  aesthetic  values  takes  men 
away  from  practical,  active  life,  —  for  beauty  is  the  nega- 
tion of  the  linked  life  of  the  social-ethical  consciousness. 
Yet  in  that  ^' whole''  where  all  is  linked,  yet  nothing  out- 
side and  beyond,  there  could  still  be  a  place  for  beauty. 
The  difficulty  is  that  such  a  perfect  whole  is  not  for  fini- 
tude.  The  beautiful  whole  is  the  beyond  world,  the  prom- 
ised land,  the  New  Jerusalem,  the  Heaven  of  our  dreams. 
So  perhaps  from  a  metaphysical  standpoint,  the  final 
opposition  and  the  tragedy  of  life  is  where  Nietzsche 
found  it.  Man  wants,  like  Prometheus  and  the  other 
rebels,  to  be  as  the  gods,  infinite.  He  wants  to  have  all 
experience,  to  be  as  the  whole.  And  yet,  he  wants  to 
be  unique  and  individual.  He  wants  his  happiness  to 
coincide  with  his  moral  obligations.  He  wants  to  be  at 
once  active  and  at  rest.  He  wants  to  harmonize  his 
creative,  aesthetic  values  with  his  ethical  strivings;  to 
have  a  life  of  rich  experience,  yet  a  life  of  self-mastery  and 
of  inner  order  and  peace.     He  wants  to  follow  his  own 


THE    INDWELLING   OF   THE    SPIRIT  451 

particular  aims  which  seem  to  him  vital  and  significant, 
and  yet  he  wants  to  be  social  and  in  relatedness  to  all  his 
world.  Perhaps  it  is  because  for  a  fleeting  moment  the 
mystic  religious  consciousness  feels  itself  to  be  one  with 
God  in  an  ineffable  immediacy,  that  it  seems  to  itself  in 
its  rapture  to  be  standing  on  the  mountain  top,  to  have  a 
vision  of  reality  in  its  wholeness,  and  to  be  one  with  the 
All.  But  life  is  a  matter  of  the  everyday  experience. 
The  way  of  life  is  a  common  road  where  we  jostle  with 
our  brothers.  Our  wills  are  often  thwarted.  We  feel  our 
limitations.  There  is  tragedy,  and  necessity  for  vicarious 
suffering.  We  have  to  be  limited  if  we  are  to  have 
definiteness  of  purpose,  uniqueness,  individuality,  per- 
sonality. Our  limitations,  therefore,  may  be  our  crown 
of  glory. 

The  final  opposition  of  religious  experience,  then,  is 
between  the  finite  and  the  infinite,  between  God  and  man. 
This  opposition  and  difference  cannot  be  wholly  overcome, 
for  it  constitutes  the  significance  of  the  universe.  For 
God  needs  man,  since  He  has  created  him,  and  without 
man  God's  life  would  be  a  blank  unity  as  Angelus  Silesius 
has  said.^  God  incarnates  himself  in  man.  And  it  is 
perfectly  clear  that  man  needs  God.  Without  God, 
there  would  be  no  real  basis  for  ideality  and  we  should 
sacrifice  that  which  is  the  very  soul  of  our  selfhood. 
Man  needs  the  gift  of  grace.  Yet  the  difference  is 
transcended,  as  far  as  it  rationally  may  be,  when  man 
seeks  to  lead  his  life  in  accord  with  that  which  the 
wisdom  of  the  ages  and  his  own  deepest  insight  have 
revealed  to  him  as  his  own  highest  good.  And  for 
the  universe  as  a  whole,  God  is  that  realized  ideal,  that 
absolute  self-consciousness  which  is  the  many  in  one, 
—  which  is  an  union  of  longing  and  satisfaction,  of  ideal 
and  immediacy. 

The  consummation  of  the  ethical  attitude  —  if  this 
could  be  —  is  aesthetic.    We  have  seen  now  in  what  sense 

1  See  page  276. 


452  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

this  cannot  be.  Man  cannot  be  God.  A  distinction  be- 
tween the  finite  and  the  infinite  has  to  remain  for  on  this 
distinction  depends  the  significance  of  the  world  as  an 
whole.  Yet,  in  another  sense,  as  the  last  chapter  tried 
to  show,  the  consummation  is  realized  and  our  analysis 
of  beauty  has  further  illumined  the  way  to  us.  It  is  real- 
ized when  the  life  task  is  found  which  is  at  once  an  ex- 
pression of  individual  uniqueness  and  which  has  —  to  use 
Professor  Miinsterberg's  words  —  ''over  individual  value '^ 
—  that  is,  that  task  which  is  to  us  emotionally  appealing, 
and  at  the  same  time  of  universal  (social)  service.  Emer- 
son was  right  when  he  said,  ''Every  man's  task  is  his  life 
preserver."  It  takes  two  elements  to  constitute  complete 
self-realization.  These  two  together  will  be  for  us  the 
will  of  God.  If  this  right  task  is  not  found  —  and  alas ! 
too  often  youth  misses  it  —  the  individual  may  still  be 
devoted  to  the  will  of  God  in  strictly  ethical  fashion.  He 
can  even  find  his  happiness  therein,  though  it  will  not  have 
quite  the  quality  of  the  best.^  It  is  an  old,  old  story,  this 
missing  by  youth  of  its  perfect  opportunity  and  way  to 
social  and  individual  self-realization,  and  we  know  the  va- 
riety of  reasons  why  he  does  so  lose  his  way.  It  should  be, 
perhaps,  the  chief  aim  of  the  guides  and  teachers  of  youth 
and  the  business  of  our  democratic  institutions  ^  to  help 
him  find  this  way  of  salvation  and  selfhood.  The  real 
vocational  training  will  lead  not  to  money-making  effi- 
ciency, but  to  this  ideal  end.  On  the  social  side,  the  per- 
fect expression  in  every  man  of  unique  individuality  in  a 
task  for  the  good  of  the  whole  community  ought  to  be  the 
ideal  of  democracy,  for  which  it  should  find,  as  means  to 
its  reaUzation,  adequate  expressive  sjnnbols  and  activities. 

We  set  out  to  answer  the  question   "What  is  the  es- 
sence of  spiritual  religion?"     We  found  that  to  get  the 

*  While  the  individual  sort  of  happiness  may  be  destroyed  or  lost, 
happiness  of  the  social  or  community  kind  never  can  be. 

'  See  for  illustration  "The  Promised  Land,"  by  Mary  Antin. 


THE   INDWELLING    OF  THE    SPIRIT  453 

answer  it  was  necessary  to  grub  in  the  earth  for  the  con- 
crete experience  itself.  This  is  not  to  go  back  to  the 
primitive  experience,  as  some  say,  but  to  get  close  to  the 
true,  the  original,  or  the  genuine  experience.  Now  looking 
back  over  our  consideration  of  religious  experience  in  the 
concrete,  we  may,  I  think,  say  that  we  find  here  certain 
dominating  ideas.  First,  we  find  the  longing  for  a  better 
than  the  present  state,  for  an  ideal,  or,  in  more  religious 
terms,  for  salvation.  Second,  we  find  a  sense  of  immediacy, 
the  feeling  of  certainty  of  the  immediate  presence  of  the  di- 
vine. Third,  the  judgment ;  this  unseen  ideal  is  Good  and 
will  help  men,  and  it  is  also  true.  Fourth,  the  obligation  on 
man's  part  to  get  into  friendly  relations  with  this  unseen 
good.  The  implications  of  these  elements  of  religious 
experience  are  various.  We  have  studied  them  at  length. 
Grouping  together  the  above  elements,  we  may  say  that 
the  characteristic  or  fundamental  religious  attitude  is  that 
of  an  unconquerable  trust  in  God  —  a  trust  which  holds 
through  all  change  and  mischance,  through  all  failures 
and  losses,  through  all  sin  and  grief.  This  attitude  is 
expressed,  for  instance,  in  many  of  the  Psalms :  "Though 
He  slay  me,  yet  will  I  trust  in  Him."  "If  God  is  on  my 
side,  what  can  man  do  to  me?"  and  in  the  following :  — 

**The  wind  that  blows  can  never  kill 

The  tree  God  plants ; 

It  bloweth  east,  it  bloweth  west, 

Its  tender  leaves  have  little  rest ; 

But  any  wind  that  blows  is  best." 

"My  terminus  near, 
The  clouds  already  closing  lq  upon  me, 
The  voyage  balk'd,  the  course  disputed,  lost, 
I  yield  my  ships  to  Thee. 

"My  hands,  my  limbs  grow  nerveless, 
My  brain  feels  rack'd,  bewilder'd. 
Let  the  old  timbers  part,  I  will  not  part, 
I  will  cling  fast  to  Thee,  0  God,  though  the  waves  buffet  me, 
Thee,  Thee  at  least  I  know."  ^ 

1  Walt  Whitman,  "  Prayer  of  Columbus." 


454  THE    DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

It  is  the  attitude  of  mind  which  can  say,  in  the  midst  of 
solitude  and  fear,  in  the  depths  of  sorrow  and  anguish, 
and  at  the  approach  of  death :  ''The  Lord  gave  and  the 
Lord  hath  taken  away,  blessed  be  the  Name  of  the  Lord ; " 
which  gains  healing  from  troubled  waters;  which  learns 
through  its  own  agony  the  meaning  of  that  love  which 
is  strong  ''to  nourish  and  succor  like  the  heavens/' 
Yet  as  many  of  our  illustrations  have  shown  us,  this 
trust  is  dependent  in  part  on  the  active,  practical  atti- 
tude of  the  worshipper. 

Thus  we  see  that  the  trust  which  is  to  some  extent 
a  "spiritual  adventure, '^  a  leap  into  the  unknown,  a 
"will  to  believe,''  is  justified  by  the  fact  that  man 
himself  strives  to  put  himself  into  right  relations  to 
that  which  his  reason  judges  to  be  the  absolute  and 
universal  good.  Yet  at  the  same  time  we  have  seen 
man  could  not  of  himself  achieve  salvation.  Divine 
grace  has  always  been  ready  to  redeem  him.  "It  was 
not  that  we  loved  God,  but  that  He  first  loved  us." 
"God  so  loved  the  world  that  He  gave  His  only  be- 
gotten son,  to  the  end  that  we  should  not  perish  but 
have  eternal  life." 

We  have  traced  the  source  of  religious  experience  to 
man's  essential  ideality,  to  his  deep-rooted  impulse  in  a 
world  to  which  he  is  imperfectly  adjusted,  to  create  an 
unseen,  a  beyond  world.  We  have  seen,  moreover,  that 
such  ideality  is  necessary  for  an  ethical  or  spiritual  religion 
which  is  the  only  form  of  religion  which  can  survive  or  be 
of  value  in  a  community  life.  Now  we  may  acknowledge 
that  this  is  true,  and  yet,  alas!  it  may  be  after  all  but  a 
rainbow  dream,  an  ideal  which  is  only  subjective,  and  thus 
it  may  turn  out  to  be  no  more  satisfactory  than  the  religion 
of  prosperity,  of  pagan  "  joie  de  vivre,"  or  the  religion  of 
science,  but  lead  at  last,  even  as  they,  to  disenchantment 
and  despair. 

It  is  true  that  ideality  is  the  very  ground  and  inspiration 
of  a  spiritual  religion.     It  is  this  fact  of  ideality  which 


THE    INDWELLING   OF   THE   SPIRIT  455 

gives  to  man  his  unconquerable  faith  that  he  is  not 
merely  nature's  child.  When  he  works  with  all  the  de- 
votion that  is  in  him  for  an  ideal,  when  he  serves  until 
death  the  cause  of  truth  or  beauty  or  righteousness,  when 
he  atones  with  his  own  dearly  loved  ends,  in  order  to 
redeem  or  to  fulfil  the  personality  of  another ;  then  he 
knows  he  is  not  nature's  son.  Yet  this  whole  idealistic 
attitude  is  fraught  with  danger  to  the  practical  life ;  for 
consider  such  lines  as  these  of  a  recent  socialistic  poet :  — 

"Think,  think !    Since  tune  and  life  began 
Your  mind  has  only  feared  and  slept ; 
Of  all  the  beasts  they  call  you  man 
Only  because  you  toiled  and  wept. 


"Beyond  your  flesh  and  mind  and  blood 
Nothing  there  is  to  live  and  do. 
There  is  no  man,  there  is  no  God, 
There  is  not  anything  but  you." 

Such  an  attitude  leads,  does  it  not,  to  the  wayward  whim 
of  the  individual  and  the  uncontrolled  passion  of  the  mob, 
with  its  hatred  of  law,  order,  and  self-discipline,  march- 
ing under  the  red  flag  of  anarchy,  whose  motto  is :  "No 
God,  no  Master"? 

The  hfe  of  the  imagination,  to  return,  may  give  to  man 
the  greatest  of  joys,  but  there  is  always  a  subtle  danger 
in  it,  —  the  danger,  namely,  that  it  may  take  its  votary 
away  from  the  common  life  and  from  the  sense  of  reality 
in  existence.  And  so,  especially  in  the  realm  of  religion, 
were  man's  vision  of  the  ideal  an  illusion,  could  there  be 
for  him  a  greater  calamity  ?  Better,  indeed,  to  know  the 
truth  at  all  costs,  for  the  knowledge  of  the  truth  will  at 
least  enable  him  better  to  adjust  himself  to  his  actual  life. 
One  feels  instinctively  that  there  is  something  wrong  with 
the  doctrine  of  all  those  philosophers  who,  accepting  the 
ideal  good,  make  it  reside  solely  in  the  mind  of  man.  How 
great  is  the  ideal  of  the  Stoic  "Sage"  of  Epictetus  and 


456  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Marcus  Aurelius,  we  have  noted.  Yet  like  all  unrealized 
ideals  it  is  liable  to  become  ineffectual  or  even  to  perish 
entirely. 

The  prevalence  of  this  point  of  view  of  subjective  ideal- 
ism amongst  the  thinkers  of  the  later  nineteenth  century- 
must,  it  seems,  have  led  to  the  opposing  type  of  religion 
and  the  movement  of  mysticism,  and  account  in  part  for 
the  existence  in  our  midst  to-day  of  so  many  pseudo- 
mystical  sects.  For  the  mystic  claims  that  his  experi- 
ence of  the  divine  is  immediate  and  ultimate.  He  has 
actually  found  God.  To  find  the  roots  of  religious  ex- 
perience in  the  fact  of  ideality  is,  therefore,  at  once  to 
raise  the  question  as  to  the  objective  reality  of  the  ideal, 
for  this,  —  that  the  ideal  shall  be  real,  existent,  —  is  the 
ultimate  demand  of  the  religious  consciousness.  At  this 
crisis  the  mystic  comes  with  another  type  of  reality.  He 
has  an  immediate  experience  of  the  divine,  and  we  have 
found  it  impossible  altogether  to  reject  this  claim  of  mys- 
ticism. Only,  it  seems,  the  mystic  does  not  altogether 
rightly  interpret  his  experience.  What  he  tells  us  of  is 
subjective  experience,  —  his  own  psychic  state.^  He 
knows  his  own  need,  his  own  anguish  of  spirit,  his  longing 
for  regeneration,  his  sense  of  redemption,  enlightenment, 
peace ;  and  surely  it  is  true  the  individual  must  himself 
have  the  experience  of  religion  if  it  is  to  be  of  any  avail,  — 
that  is,  the  experience  must  be  genuine  and  original. 
Religion  is  not  something  imposed  from  the  outside.  The 
soul  of  the  individual  must  at  least  be  responsive  to  the 
grace  of  God.  It  must  feel  inwardly  its  present  dissatis- 
faction ;  it  must  itself  long  for  redemption.  But  how  is 
it  that  the  mystic  comes  to  interpret  this,  his  subjective 
experience,  in  terms  of  an  absolute  and  divine  reality? 
At  first  the  mystic  brings  all  his  experience  to  bear  on  his 
judgment :  God  is  the  Good.  With  all  his  attention  con- 
centrated on  this  thought,  he  enters  upon  the  ''Negative 

1  See  W.  E.  Hocking,  "  The  Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experience," 
for  a  fine  psychological  account  of  the  mystic's  inner  experience. 


THE    INDWELLING   OF   THE    SPIRIT  457 

Path."  Concentration  of  the  attention,  the  shutting  out 
of  irrelevancies  and  eUminating  of  distractions  is  in  itself, 
as  we  know,  a  method  which  leads  to  enlightenment. 
The  mystic's  negative  process,  then,  tends  to  be  illumi- 
nating, even  as  the  mystic  describes  it.  When  all  dis- 
tractions are  gone,  he  holds  —  as  Buddha  at  the  limit  in 
the  series  of  trances  finds  Nirvana  —  that  he  will  come 
face  to  face  with  God.  Feelings  of  unity,  harmony,  and 
peace  pervade  his  consciousness  and  these  naturally  tend 
to  become  associated  with  his  idea  of  the  Good.  But  his 
judgment  that  God  is  good  and  what  constitutes  this 
goodness  (that  is  a  good  which  is  social  and  ethical)  is, 
after  all,  based  on  his  whole  hfe's  experience.^ 

But  mysticism  is  justified  from  the  point  of  view  of 
immediacy,  for  it  is  true  that  reality  appears  most  vividly 
and  intensely  in  the  immediacy  of  feeling.  This  is  the 
real ;  this  is  the  truth,  this  is  life,  we  cry,  in  some  moment 
of  overwhelming  inner  experience  of  rapture,  sorrow,  or 
surprise.  But  when  we  consider  more  closely  this  ex- 
perience, we  note  its  poignancy  arises  out  of  its  signifi- 
cance and  meaning ;  that  is,  its  reality  belongs  in  part  to 
the  idea  J  —  to  the  thought  world:  — 

"O  dreadful  is  the  check  intense  —  the  agony 
When  the  ear  begins  to  hear  and  the  eye  begins  to  see ; 
When  the  pulse  begins  to  throb  and  the  brain  to  think  again, 
The  soul  to  feel  the  flesh  and  the  flesh  to  feel  the  chain." 

Sometimes  our  souls  are  prophetic.  We  see  as  in  a 
flash  that  which  eventually  comes  to  pass.  We  call  it  a 
deep  intuition  —  something  deeper  than  reason.  It  is  not 
a  process  of  critical  analysis.  We  do  not  reason  it  out  as 
we  do  a  problem  in  algebra,  or  symbolic  logic,  neverthe- 
less the  data  are  all  in,  the  premises  which  lead  to  the  in- 
evitable conclusion  are  before  us.    Interest  and  feehng 

* "  'Tis  Reason  herself,  tiptoe 

At  the  ultimate  bound  of  her  wit, 
On  the  verges  of  Night  and  Day." 

George  Meredith,  "A  Faith  on  Trial." 


458  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

have  led  to  certain  perceptions  on  our  part  —  knowledge 
and  experience  have  made  us  acquainted  with  what 
happens  when  these  things  meet.  We  do  not  consciously 
reason  it  out.  It  all  dawns  upon  us  in  a  moment  —  in- 
stinctively as  it  were  —  yet  it  is  really  thought  in  his 
workshop  all  the  same. 

Reality  is  immediacy  and  thought,  but  this  is  not  the 
whole  story.  For  religious  experience,  reality  is  even 
more  to  be  found  in  the  creative  deed  as  this  deed  appears 
in  relation  to  the  data  of  fortune ;  that  is,  to  the  other  than 
the  human  will.  The  will  faces  the  question:  ''What 
shall  I  do  to  be  saved?"  The  creative  will  finds  itself 
confronted  by  a  world  which  is  not  of  its  own  making,  a 
world  to  whose  laws  it  must,  in  a  measure,  submit,  and  yet 
a  world  which  it  can  transform  into  elements  of  spiritual 
value.  The  creative  will  takes  the  gifts  of  fortune  and 
dedicates  them  to  the  service  of  its  own  divine  ideal.  As 
for  the  stings  and  buffets  of  fortune,  the  limitations,  losses, 
tragedies  of  this  our  mortal  life,  they,  too,  can  be  trans- 
formed and  transfigured  by  the  wholly  dedicated  will 
into  necessary  elements  in  the  life  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 
Every  deed  is  in  its  way  creative,  for  it  is  unique  in  its 
irrevocableness,^  but  "  the  typically  creative  deed  "  is  a 
deed  which  is  alive  with  thought  and  suffused  with  feeling. 

There  is  another  than  self,  then,  another  than  my  private 
will,  namely,  the  data  of  fortune,  nature,  environment,  — 
and  sometimes  this  other  seems  wholly  alien  to  my  will,  a 
cruel  and  hostile  other.  Now,  when  any  adversity  which 
seems  not  of  our  own  making  but  to  come  from  this  alien 
other,  from  nature  and  environment,  appears  to  us  cruel, 
intolerable,  and  irrational,  we  have  to  do  one  of  two  things: 
we  have  either  to  reject  the  rationality  of  the  universe,  or 
we  have  to  readjust  our  idea  of  what  constitutes  ration- 
ality for  the  universe  as  a  whole.  Now  the  former  we 
cannot  do  rationally,  for  it  upsets  every  judgment  of  truth 
and  makes  none  true.  As  to  the  second  alternative,  the 
1  As  set  forth  in  the  phiJosophy  of  Professor  Royce. 


THE   INDWELLING   OF  THE    SPIRIT  459 

way  to  transform  our  notions  of  what  constitutes  a  ra- 
tionally good  world  is  in  a  great  measure  by  means  of  the 
creative  deed.  The  creative  will,  taking  up  the  given 
of  nature  into  its  own  purposes,  while  at  the  same  time 
yielding  to  the  natural  laws,  unites  them  to  itself  in  the 
creative  deed  and  thereby  transforms  them.  And  the 
will  which  acts  in  the  service  of  the  universal  ideal  is  also 
united  to  it ;  that  is,  to  the  Eternal  and  Self -existing  Real. 

Man  is  confronted  with  an  alien  world,  but  we  have 
learned  that  ^^he  who  overcomes  his  own  coward  spirit" 
overcomes  the  world.  This  truth  imphes  that  the  Way  of 
Life  is  in  truth  the  way  of  renunciation,  yet  it  is  no  mere 
state  of  passive  resignation  to  an  ahen  world-will,  for 
man  overcomes  the  World  through  a  free  creative  deed 
which  transforms  the  data  of  life  into  new  values.  This 
is  the  beginning  of  a  new  life  for  man,  for  if  man's  act 
were  simply  submission  to  an  ahen,  hostile  will,  we  could 
not,  as  we  saw  above,  even  begin  to  find  the  solution  of 
the  problem  to  which  the  conflict  of  our  aesthetic  and  our 
ethical  values  gives  rise.  But  man  can  only  overcome  the 
world  and  himself  because  of  the  light  of  his  ideal.  And  if, 
in  the  fierce  struggle  and  conflict  of  the  spirit  for  self- 
mastery,  the  frail  physical  body  is  worn  out  and  succumbs, 
in  God's  world  this  is  not  failure.  The  creative  imagina- 
tion constructs  the  ideal  and  the  creative  will  strives  to 
make  it  actual  in  finite  Ufe.  The  synthetic  reason  judges 
the  ideal  to  be  true  and  existent.  This  ideal  it  is  which  is 
the  redeeming  grace  of  God.  The  religious  consciousness 
recognizes,  as  indeed  the  metaphysical  consciousness  must 
prove,  that  man's  ultimate  good  is  no  mere  dream  or  sub- 
jective ideal.     It  is  very  God. 

The  reality  which  the  Pragmatists  and  the  Neo-realists 
and  even  the  Mystics,  although  they  may  use  the  language 
of  idealism,  are  seeking,  is  a  sensible  reality,  a  reahty  which 
requires  scientific  verification.  But  rehgious  values  belong 
to  another  dimension  and  require  other  verification.  It 
is  childish  to  seek  for  a  sign.     God  is  not  in  the  earthquake 


460  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

or  the  thunder.  God  belongs  to  a  world  of  meanings. 
A  world  of  meanings  can  only  be  verified  by  searching  out 
man's  own  deepest  meanings  and  by  trying  to  discover 
whither  they  lead  and  what  they  can,  without  contradic- 
tion and  in  the  light  of  all  the  facts  at  issue,  possibly  mean. 
This  task  belongs  to  the  synthetic  reason.  Such  a  thor- 
oughgoing search  of  the  reason  can  only  lead  us,  I  believe, 
to  the  concept  of  an  eternal  and  supernatural  world,  — 
a  complete  knower,  a  realized  personality  or  self.  This 
is  the  only  point  where  without  contradiction  of  our  own 
meanings  we  may  find  rest. 

Like  Dante  after  his  journey  through  the  land  of  thick  air 
and  dark  shadows  we  have  come  through  doubt  and  strife 
and  questionings  into  an  atmosphere  serene  and  pure  and 
suffused  with  heavenly  light.  We  have  been  listening 
with  our  ear  at  the  mouth  of  the  world-shell,  and  have 
caught  a  murmur  of  the  secret  of  the  universe,  and  have 
felt,  as  it  were,  the  beat  and  rhythm  of  angel  wings.  In 
our  consideration  of  the  tendencies  of  religious  experience 
in  their  variety  of  difference,  contrast,  opposition,  or 
blending,  it  is  as  if  we  had  been  watching  the  fates  weav- 
ing with  many-colored  threads  on  the  loom  of  the  world 
the  pattern  of  man's  life.  We  have  seen  that  none  of 
the  opposing  tendencies  which  we  have  analyzed,  or  the 
forms  which  they  have  taken,  could,  if  considered  sepa- 
rately, give  us  the  whole  truth.  The  great  word  is 
the  'togetherness"  of  the  experience.  This  gave  us  the 
'^ paradox  of  the  religious  consciousness"  which  we  have 
been  pursuing,  and  which  it  has  taken  us  so  long  to  solve. 
We  have  been  like  children  playing  the  game  of  ''magic 
music,"  for  all  along  the  solution  has  been  going  on  before, 
just  hidden  from  our  eyes,  beckoning  and  calling  to  us  to 
come  and  follow  after. 

Rehgious  experience  in  its  wholeness  seems  to  me  like 
Emerson's  idea  of  the  universe  —  a  circle.  It  is  a  crystal, 
shining  with  wonderful  radiant  hues  ;  it  is  a  fluent  sphere 
in  which  the  opposing  tendencies  balance  each  other  and 


THE    INDWELLING   OF   THE    SPIRIT  461 

SO  hold  the  whole  together.  And  what  these  opposing 
tendencies  are,  we  hardly  need  to  repeat.  We  analyze 
religious  consciousness  into  its  elements  in  order  to  de- 
scribe it  and  make  it  clearer  to  ourselves  and  to  others,  and 
then  synthesize  the  elements  again  and  try  to  express  the 
whole  in  one  or  two  logical  concepts.  This  we  have  to  do 
if  we  are  thoughtful,  while  acknowledging  fully  that 
something  ever  escapes  our  logical  constructions.  As 
we  have  seen,  religion  while  it  has  its  eternal,  permanent, 
unchanging  aspect,  is  also  a  movement,  a  process,  a  way 
of  life,  and  it  is  these  together.  Neither  the  concepts  of 
structure  nor  those  of  process,  therefore,  will  entirely  de- 
scribe religious  experience  as  an  whole.  If  we  want  one 
term  or  concept  to  express  the  inclusiveness  of  religious 
experience  in  its  double  aspects  of  ideahty  and  immediacy, 
of  permanence  and  change,  of  rest  and  activity,  of  feeling 
and  doing,  of  self  and  another,  of  mystical  insight  and  of 
ethical  practice,  its  moods  of  exaltation  and  depression, 
its  sense  of  sin  and  of  salvation,  —  I  suggest  the  concept 
of  rhythm. 

In  rhythm  we  find  a  temporal  process,  and  yet  at  the 
same  time  the  series  of  elements  must  be  expressed  as  one 
whole  or  group.^ 

^  What  is  the  structural  form  of  the  rhythmic  unit  ?  Briefly,  the 
essential  objective  conditions  in  the  constitution  of  rhythm  appear  to 
be 

1.  Recurrence. 

2.  Accentuation. 

3.  Rate. 

The  whole  group  of  elements  which  make  up  the  rhythmic  unit 
must  be  present  to  consciousness  as  a  single  experience,  the  first  and 
last  elements  together.  And  in  the  rhythmic  unit  is  found  the  funda- 
mental antithesis  of  two  phases,  the  accented  and  the  unaccented 
portions.  Recurrence  is  essential  to  give  the  impression  of  rhythm, 
and  the  fact  of  differentiation  in  an  orderly  way  —  that  is,  the  main- 
taining of  temporal  intervals  amongst  the  elements  of  the  series  and 
the  periodic  accent  of  certain  of  these  elements. 

Hence  to  quote  McDougall ;  — 

"  Rhythmic  forms  are  not  themselves  rhythm.  They  must  initiate 
the  factor  of  movement  for  rhythm  to  appear.     The  form  is  indepen- 


462  THE   DRAMA    OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Further,  we  can  say  that  '^rhythm"  is  at  once  a  social 
and  an  individual  experience,  as  religion  is.^  As  an  inti- 
mate, an  immediate,  an  appreciative  experience,  rhythm 
is  individual ;  it  is  an  aesthetic  experience.  ^ 

But  rhythm  is  also  a  social  phenomenon.  Dancing 
seems  to  have  been  the  earliest  of  the  arts,  and  some 
writers  hold  that  the  rhythm  of  music  and  poetry  devel- 
oped as  an  accompaniment  to  the  dance  and  march,  re- 
ligious or  social.  Thus,  rhythm  which  is  immediately 
felt  and  which  is  the  spontaneous  expression  of  emotion, 
becomes  in  this  external  expression  the  embodiment  of 
'^communal  consent. ''  Instances  of  it  appear  in  the 
customs  of  primitive  people.  For  instance,  in  the  treading 
of  the  wine  press,  in  the  pulhng  of  the  oar,  in  the  activities 
of  grinding  at  the  mill  and  in  the  spinning  together  of 
women,  in  the  marching  to  battle  of  warriors,  in  the  plays 
of  children,  in  the  rehgious  dances  of  negroes,  in  choruses 
and  refrains  generally.     In  brief,  in  festivities  and  play, 

dent  of  the  movement.  The  limit  to  the  rhythmic  unit  is  the  periodic 
accentuation.  From  one  rhythmic  unit  we  get  no  impression  of 
rhythm,  but  with  the  first  recurrence  rhythm  at  once  appears.  .  .  . 

As  to  rate :  A  certain  rate,  neither  too  fast  nor  too  slow,  is  necessary 
to  give  the  impression  of  rhythm." 

^  Recent  psychophysical  theories  find  an  explanation  of  rhythm  in 
the  functioning  of  consciousness  itself.  Thus  T.  L.  Bolton  in  the 
American  Journal  of  Psychology  shows  that  consciousness  always 
rhythmizes  objectively  equal  sense  stimuli  —  and  Professor  Miinster- 
berg  shows  that  attention  or  vividness  fluctuates  periodically,  hence 
of  stimuli  reeurrii^  at  regular  intervals,  certain  ones  will  receive 
greater  emphasis  than  others.  Rhythm  is  pleasure  giving.  It  is 
stimulating  but  yet  reposeful,  for  it  is  in  harmony  with  our  natural 
functioning ;  yet,  since  the  first  element  in  rhythm  seeks  the  last,  it  is 
cyclic  and  felt  as  one  whole.  Thus  rhythm  meets  the  requirements 
of  Miss  Puffer's  aesthetic  formula  of  favorable  stimulation  with  repose. 

2  The  field  of  Art  is  of  course  peculiarly  the  sphere  of  rhythm. 
It  is  found  in  all  the  arts  —  I  will  give  just  one  instance  here.  In  the 
"  Convivio  "  (Book  II,  Chap.  12),  in  explaining  the  first  canzone,  Dante 
says :  — 

"  In  order  that  this  (final)  part  may  be  more  fully  understood,  I  say 
that  in  all  canzoni  it  is  generally  called  the  Return  (Tomata)  because 
the  poets  who  used  it  in  the  first  place,  made  it  so  that  the  canzone 
being  simg,  with  a  certain  portion  of  the  song  they  could  return  to  it." 


THE   INDWELLING   OF  THE   SPIRIT  463 

in  labor,  in  religious  rites,  in  going  to  battle,  we  find 
rhythm,  and  the  significance  of  it  is  ^togetherness/' 

This  brief  sketch  of  the  rhythm-concept  may  be  suffi- 
cient to  suggest  how  the  rhythmic  form  may  serve  to 
interpret  the  whole  of  rehgious  experience.  Certainly, 
there  is  something  complete  and  permanent  in  religious 
experience,  but  the  temporal  —  the  process  —  is  an  es- 
sential element  in  such  an  whole,  since  even  the  mystic 
experience  exempHfies  it.  The  practical,  the  moral,  the 
aesthetic,  and  the  emotional,  are  all  elements  in  the  struc- 
ture of  the  rehgious  unit,  as  are  the  varying  phases  and 
elements  in  the  unit  of  rhythm.  In  rehgious  experience 
there  are  alternations  of  activity  and  repose  as  in  rhythmic 
movements ;  and  the  experience  is  at  once  individual  and 
social  as  rhythm  is.  The  temporal  process  is  essential 
and  real  as  it  is  in  rhythm;  and,  further,  religious  pro- 
cesses are  to  some  extent  repetitions,  cycHc,  —  movement 
returning  upon  itself  as  is  the  case  in  rhythm.  Just  as 
in  music  we  have  the  strain  of  the  melody  to  return  to  the 
fundamental  note,  so  in  the  rehgious  consciousness  the 
finite  individual  strives  to  return  to  its  source  —  to  the 
Infinite,  but  the  striving  is  genuine  and  cannot  be  eUm- 
inated  —  only  the  Mount  of  Purgatory  leads  to  the  Bea- 
tific Vision,  as  Dante  knew,  —  and  the  striving  is  ever 
renewed.  But  this  consciousness,  the  process  and  the 
fulfilment  together^  is  one  experience,  one  whole,  as  the 
rhythmic  sequence  is. 

So,  too,  religious  experience  turns  out  to  be  no  isolated 
phenomenon,  no  emotional,  fanciful,  or  sentimental  pro- 
cess. And  by  means  of  rhythm,  we  can  unite  it  to  other 
processes,  cosmic  and  organic  as  well  as  aesthetic.  ''To 
winds  and  waves  and  waters,"  to  undulations  of  light, 
heat,  and  sound,  to  rhythmic  movements  of  heart  beats 
and  of  respiration,  and  to  periodicity  in  an  organism's 
growth ;  to  fluctuations  of  attention,  to  the  circular  re- 
action of  habits,  to  vibrations  of  cells,  and  to  the  swing  of 
planets  in  their  orbits.     Our  day  with  its    alternating 


464  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

phases  of  day  and  night  and  night  and  day  is  a  rhythmic 
unit,  and  this  rhythm  appears  again  in  the  physical  hfe 
of  man,  in  periods  of  activity  and  repose ;  and  further,  if 
self-representation  is  'Hhe  most  characteristic  function  of 
consciousness, "  to  quote  Professor  Royce,  then  conscious- 
ness itself  is  a  recurrent  or  rhythmic  process,  and  reHgious 
experience  will  be  in  form  one  with  that  which  we  must 
take  to  be  the  essential  structure  of  the  universe  as  an 
whole. 

In  Hegelian  phraseology,  Spirit  is  movement,  —  life. 
Its  nature  is  to  differentiate  itself,  to  manifest  and  find 
itself  in  another  and  so  overcome  the  distinction,  since 
this  other  is  no  external  other  but  in  reality  identical  with 
the  spirit  itself. 

The  rhythm  of  the  religious  consciousness  appears  in  the 
recurrent  alternations  of  appreciation  and  activity,  of 
recollection  and  re-creation  and,  in  general,  in  the  re- 
current striving  on  the  part  of  the  finite  and  particular 
to  return  to  its  source  —  to  the  universal,  or  to  that  which 
in  its  completion  it  truly  is.  The  finite  religious  con- 
sciousness —  the  part  —  achieves  oneness  with  the  whole 
through  apprehension  of  the  divine  purpose ;  that  is,  the 
purpose  of  the  whole.  Its  task,  or  way  of  life,  is  the  carry- 
ing out  of  this  purpose  in  the  temporal  world,  and  this  is 
its  salvation.  This  oneness  of  purpose  is,  then,  the  con- 
stant and  unifying  principle  between  the  finite  and  the  in- 
finite. Such  identity  of  purpose  is  the  true  "  ought  "  and 
goal  of  the  ethical  religious  consciousness,  and  on  such 
identity  follows  the  mystic's  beatitude,  sense  of  security, 
and  inner  peace.  For  the  partial  can  find  such  harmony 
and  permanence  only  in  that  wholeness  to  which,  as  a 
part,  it  inevitably  belongs.  The  whole  is  analogous  to 
the  rhythmic  series  in  its  totahty.  It  is  one,  unchanging, 
eternal,  but  it  includes  in  its  wholeness  the  temporal  pro- 
cess of  the  sequence  of  elements  (moments,  parts)  or 
groups  of  such  elements  on  which  the  rhythm  itself  de- 
pends for  its  actual  realization  and  being. 


THE   INDWELLING   OF   THE   SPIRIT  465 

We  have  analyzed  religious  experience  into  its  primal 
elements  in  order  to  discover  its  nature  and  its  source, 
and  then,  as  well  as  we  could,  we  have  reconstructed  the 
whole  and  have  suggested  its  value.  Our  task  has  been 
a  theoretical  not  a  practical  one.  Yet,  in  a  subject  of 
this  kind  where  questions  of  value  and  worth  are  raised, 
the  practical  side  is  inevitably  impHed.  Rehgion  is  not 
something  outside  of  life.  It  is  at  its  very  heart.  This, 
I  think,  has  been  implied  all  along  our  way.  Yet  now,  in 
closing,  I  would  make  a  more  direct  appeal  for  the  practical 
re-creation  of  the  life  of  the  spirit  in  ourselves  as  indi- 
viduals and  in  the  community  as  a  whole. 

Not  long  since  it  was  the  fashion,  especially  in  scientific 
circles,  so-called,  to  decry  religion  as  a  thing  of  the  cloister 
which  attempted  only  to  fit  men  for  a  supernatural  world, 

—  a  world  which  was  itself  an  illusion.  That  ancient 
warfare  between  science  and  religion  is  not  ended  yet, 
and  yet  to-day  there  has  arisen  a  scientific  type  of  religion, 

—  a  religion  which  takes  the  form  either  of  psychothera- 
peutics, or  of  social  efficiency,  of  social  service,  or  a  kind 
of  religion  which  may  simply  be  called  a  rehgion  of  comfort 
and  prosperity.  For  to-day  it  is  recognized  even  by  the 
scientifically  trained  that  religion  is  a  valuable  asset.  A 
recent  book,  ''A  Religion  Worth  Having,"^  whose  main  in- 
terest appears  to  be  the  conquering  of  nature  to  increase 
production,  attempts  to  translate  religion  into  terms  of 
social  economics  and  of  social  efficiency.  According  to  this 
book  the  goal  of  life  should  be  expressed  as  '^The  fellow- 
ship of  the  Productive  Life."  Rehgion  may  be  used  to 
banish  worry,  to  keep  men  in  sound  health  and  so  to  make 
them  efficient  and  comfortable.  Religion  may  be  em- 
ployed to  fill  men  with  enthusiasm  for  the  true  business 
of  life  —  that  is,  work  for  the  better  adjustment  between 
man  and  his  earthly  environment  through  the  improve- 
ment of  external  conditions  and  through  the  development 
of  that  '^character"  which  can  be  wholly  described  in 
terms  of  muscle  reactions. 

2  H  ^  Thomas  Nixon  Carver. 


466  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Again,  religion  may  simply  mean  the  sense  of  such  ad- 
justment on  the  part  of  the  prosperous  efficient  individual 
and  of  the  community  to  which  he  belongs.  That  is,  it  is 
a  rehgion  belonging  to  our  prosperous,  hustling,  efficient, 
modern  world.  Thus,  while  the  profounder  scientific 
thinkers,  though  themselves  still  perhaps  agnostic,  appear 
perfectly  tolerant  towards  a  religious  attitude,  among  the 
scientifically  cultured,  as  we  may  perhaps  call  them,  has 
appeared  the  religion  of  science,  so-called.  But  this 
religion  of  adjustment  and  prosperity,  or  of  a  social  service 
limited  to  the  conditions  of  our  earthly  existence  is,  I  think, 
on  the  wrong  track,  and  is  bound  in  the  end  to  fail. 

The  Failure  of  '^the  Religion  of  Science.^ ^  —  The  funda- 
mental reason  why  this  is  so,  is,  after  our  discussion,  per- 
fectly clear.  The  religion  of  science  is  not  a  rehgion  of 
a  supernatural  world,  but  man,  by  virtue  of  his  ideality 
and  his  creativeness,  belongs  to  such  an  invisible  order ; 
and,  further,  this  rehgion  of  science  will  fail  because  it 
ignores  some  of  the  facts  of  life.  It  does  not  consider  the 
essential  elements  in  the  universe  of  beauty  or  of  tragedy, 
and  it  fails  to  interpret  the  real  meaning  of  sin. 

Science  makes  for  the  better  adjustment  of  the  indi- 
vidual to  his  environment,  but  there  are  ills  which  science 
will  never  be  able  to  banish  entirely  from  the  world.  The 
first  group  of  evils  which  we  may  mention  consists  of 
evils  due  to  unpreventable  accident  from  the  forces  of 
nature ;  from  the  ageing  process ;  from  the  fact  of  death ; 
and  from  the  sorrow  to  ourselves  and  others  which  is  inci- 
dental to  these  fact's.  There  will  be  woe  and  anguish  while 
man  is  human  with  a  heart  which  suffers  itself  and  which 
beats  in  sympathy  with  others. 

Secondly,  science  is  occupied  with  the  material  world,  its 
elements,  relations,  and  laws.  It  does  not  strike  at  the 
root,  hence  it  cannot  overcome  those  evils  whose 
roots  are  in  the  selfishness,  waywardness,  and  love 
of  ease  of  the  human  will.  Such  evils,  for  instance,  as 
the  misunderstandings  and  estrangements  of  friends,  or 


THE   INDWELLING   OF   THE    SPIRIT  467 

the  cruel  shafts  of  hypocrisy,  flattery,  and  malice.  We 
ask  again  whether  a  religion  of  prosperity  and  efficiency 
will  lead  to  an  entire  overcoming  of  the  ''bad  self"  and, 
if  not,  how  will  a  religion  of  science  meet  such  perennial 
human  needs  as  those  mentioned  above?  Whither  shall 
the  life  which  has  been  wounded  at  the  heart  and  which 
drags  its  way  fainting  along  life's  road  flee  for  refuge  — 
whither  ?  And  what  of  our  sense  of  guilt  and  our  need 
of  forgiveness  ?  Can  a  religion  of  science  really  cleanse  the 
soul  from  sin  or  free  man's  heart  from  this  anguish  of  spirit  ? 

We  have  spoken  of  individual  experience,  of  human  sin, 
need  and  sorrow,  but  this  is  not  all.  The  old  order 
changeth,  giving  place  to  the  new.  Our  age  is,  as  we 
have  already  noted,  an  age  of  transition  and  of  radical 
readjustment  of  values,  and  there  are  signs  already  on 
the  horizon  of  even  greater  social  and  industrial  change 
in  the  approaching  future,  and  who  knows  in  what  cat- 
astrophic manner  the  Day  of  the  Lord  will  come !  Will 
our  democratic  institutions  and  laws,  and  those  customs 
and  ideals  behind  them,  from  which  they  have  sprung, 
be  able  in  their  essential  spirit  to  survive  the  cataclysm 
which  may  overtake  them  ?  And  if  not,  what  then  ?  In 
the  days  perchance  of  panic,  anarchy,  and  peril,  of  misery 
and  desolation,  of  wars  and  rumors  of  war,  when  our  most 
cherished  ideals  seem  going  under  and  our  whole  civiliza- 
tion on  the  verge  of  being  overthrown,  what  will  a  religion 
of  prosperity  and  of  scientific  efl&ciency  avail  ? 

In  the  third  place,  science  ignores  the  integral  ele- 
ment of  beauty.  Like  the  moral,  the  scientific  attitude 
is  the  antipodes  of  the  aesthetic  attitude.  The  artist,  the 
lover  and  creator  of  beauty,  is  more  richly  endowed  as  to 
his  emotional  nature  than  the  rest  of  us.  In  him  lives 
that  underground  fife  of  racial  instincts  and  intuitions, 
with  its  up-rushes  into  consciousness,  which  has  been 
called  ''the  subliminal  self."    The  artistic  temperament  ^ 

1  The  fundamental  distinction  between  the  scientific  attitude  and 
the  appreciative  attitude  —  to  use  an  expression  which  seems  more 


468  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

cannot  adjust  itself  to  the  conventional  regulations  of  so- 
ciety. It  cannot  wholly  submit  to,  or  be  controlled  by, 
the  laws  and  customs  of  a  science-ridden  world.  Hence, 
too  often,  emotionally  and  morally,  this  life  suffers  ship- 
wreck. Here  is  one  of  the  chief  causes  of  man's  sorrow 
as  well  as  of  his  greatest  achievement.  Already  we  have 
seen  how  difficult  it  is  to  find  the  final  word  here.  One 
who  has  thought  much  on  this  subject  has  suggested  that 
the  artist,  as  person,  is  a  case  of  involuntary  vicarious 
atonement.  The  artist  brings  us  the  best  of  gifts,  but  for 
himself,  as  individual,  there  is  disaster. 

No  one,  I  think,  has  found  a  wholly  satisfactory  solution 
to  the  problem  of  the  aesthetic-ethical  consciousness  and 
its  values.  Perhaps  the  reason  is  that  it  really  cannot 
be  solved  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  finite  world.  May 
this  not  be  one  justification  of  man's  inevitable  beUef  in 
'^a.  beyond  world,"  and  a  guarantee  of  its  actuality  ?  The 
artistic  temperament  and  genius  needs  an  infinite  out- 
look. It  can  only  be  judged  in  relation  to  the  universe 
as  an  whole.  In  an  '^  unseen  universe  "  where  man's  ideals 
of  truth,  beauty,  and  goodness  are  finally  revealed  in  whole- 
ness and  harmony,  it,  too,  finds,  we  may  believe,  its  perfect 
adjustment  to  its  world. 

Because  a  scientific  and  rationalistic  type  of  religion 
fails  to  meet  the  emotional  and  appreciative  side  of  human 
nature,  men  have  turned  to-day  to  mysticism.  But  the 
current  forms  of  mysticism  are  of  small  avail  when  the 
hour  of  rapture  has  passed.  Mysticism,  as  we  have  seen, 
offers  no  permanent  or  universal  basis  of  truth  and  valid- 
ity.    The  thrill  of  emotional  ecstasy  is  not  itself  the  crown 

generally  applicable  than  the  expression  "artistic  temperament" 
which  latter  appears  to  connote  a  special  class  —  is  this  :  The  apprecia- 
tive consciousness  is  interested  in  human  beings  as  persons  who  love 
and  hate,  suffer  and  rejoice,  make  plans  and  pursue  them  while  science 
is  interested  in  them  as  a  bundle  of  brain  cells,  nerves,  and  muscle 
reactions.  Hence  the  far  greater  suffering  (shall  we  say,  also,  joy) 
which  must  come  to  the  appreciative  type  and  the  greater  difficulty 
he  has  in  carrying  out  his  own  ends. 


THE   INDWELLING   OF   THE    SPIRIT  469 

of  glory,  and,  moreover,  it  passes  swiftly  away,  and  whether 
it  will  return  or  not,  no  man  can  tell.  We  have  seen 
again  and  again  how  in  pure  mysticism  the  moral  will 
and  all  that  depends  upon  it  vanishes. 

''In  the  still  desert  of  the  Godhead  when  never  was 
difference ''  nor  change,  there  is  nothing  at  all.  The 
actual  attainment  of  the  mystic  is  unconsciousness.  His 
description  of  it  is  in  ''borderland"  terms.  At  the  hmit 
of  the  mystic  series  (for  instance  of  Buddhistic  trances : 
neti,  neti,  of  the  Hindoos,  etc.)  the  universe  itself  would 
disappear  into  nothingness,  but  this  result  is  irrational 
and  absurd.  The  danger  of  mysticism  is,  as  we  have 
noted  all  along  the  way,  in  its  tendency  to  emotionalism, 
sensationalism,  individualism,  caprice,  and  anarchy.  Yet 
the  mystic  cults  have  one  element  of  value.  They  liber- 
ate the  spirit  from  the  pettiness,  worldliness,  and  com- 
mercialism and  thirst  for  power  of  our  time. 

If  we  are  to  live  the  true  life  of  the  spirit,  we  must  turn 
away  absolutely  from*  the  "Zeitgeist"  of  this  restless, 
materialistic  spirit  of  gain  with  which  our  time  is  cursed ; 
from  the  love  of  luxury  and  ease ;  from  the  paganism  of 
a  mere  "joie  de  vivre"  of  a  psychophysical,  temporary 
existence,  which  can  give  no  abiding  peace.  Socialism, 
—  the  Utopian  dream  of  our  day, — seeking  as  it  does 
to  improve  external  conditions,  may  be,  if  it  succeeds 
in  securing  equal  opportunity  for  all,  a  means  of  help 
to  the  life  of  the  spirit;  yet,  in  the  end,  these  ex- 
ternal aids  which  socialism  proposes  are  mere  "scaffold- 
ings," and  of  no  avail,  without  the  resolve  on  our  part  to  be 
men  independent  of  circumstances,  in  whom  the  divine 
life  reveals  itself.  It  is  no  use  to  try  to  escape  from  our 
individual  responsibilities  by  laying  the  blame  on  social 
groups  (such  as  corporations,  churches,  governments, 
etc.).  We  are  individually  responsible  for  the  intention 
of  our  Hves.  Only  an  entire  self-consecration  to  that 
unseen  good  which  in  our  purest  moments  we  hold  to  be 
the  best  can  win  us  salvation.    But  this  does  not  mean 


470  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

that  we  are  to  go  apart  and  separate  ourselves  as  the 
religieux  of  old  from  our  brethren.  No,  it  means  to  live 
the  common  life,  to  give  the  helping  hand,  to  do  the  self- 
sacrificing  deed,  yet,  so  to  live  as  the  heavenly-minded, 
having  the  peace  of  God  in  our  hearts  and  the  ideal  light 
as  our  guide.  It  means,  moreover,  the  transformation  of 
all  natural  values  through  the  dedication  of  them  to  the 
service  of  the  religious  ideal,  that  is,  to  God. 

If  we  have  set  our  hearts  on  the  things  of  the  spirit, 
no  catastrophe  can  overcome  us.  This  is  what  the  great 
teachers  of  religion  have  always  said  (Buddha,  Jesus, 
Socrates,  Psalms,  etc.).  And  now  we  can  see  in  what 
sense  it  is  true.  If  we  are  loyal  to  the  ideal,  loyal  at  all 
cost,  whatever  the  changes  we  cannot  founder.  This 
attitude  of  religion  is  like  the  spirit  of  forgiveness.  For- 
giveness means  a  taking  back.  But  forgiveness  cannot 
really  be  granted  without  repentance,  that  is,  a  complete 
change  of  heart,  the  giving  up  of  old  idols  and  facing 
steadily  in  the  new  direction.  So  it  is  with  the  religion  of 
the  spirit.  We  must,  without  reservation,  give  ourselves 
freely,  wholly  to  the  ideal  good.^  This  wholly  dedicated 
attitude  is  expressed  in  the  following  prayer  of  Christina 
Rossetti :  — 

"O  Lord,  grant  us  grace  never  to  parley  with  temptation,  never 
to  tamper  with  conscience ;  never  to  spare  the  right  eye,  or  hand,  or 
foot  that  is  a  snare  to  us.  Never  to  lose  our  souls,  though  in  exchange 
we  should  gain  the  whole  world." 

The  mission  of  religion  has  always  been  to  be  the  healer 
and  consoler,  but  we  have  learned  that  it  is  far  more  than 
this.  The  attitude  of  rehgion,  of  self-consecration  to  the 
Ideal,  is  the  saviour  of  our  souls.  It  is  our  deliverer  from 
the  selfishness,  slothfulness,  passion  and  caprice,  hypocrisy 
and  meanness  of  the  lower  self.     It  inspires  us  to  self- 

1  This  is  usually  expressed  in  Christian  religion  as  ''self -surrender," 
but  it  is  an  active  not  a  passive  surrender,  and  it  implies  active  service 
of  the  Ideal. 


THE    INDWELLING   OF   THE    SPIRIT  471 

mastery,  and  spurs  us  on  to  new  and  ever  new  spiritual 
achievement.  As  for  our  sorrows,  it  strengthens  us  to 
meet  those  ills  which  are  unavoidable,  by  idealizing  them ; 
that  is,  it  enables  us  to  find  their  place  in  the  Whole 
and  thus  to  transform  them  into  ministers  of  grace. 

But,  one  asks,  will  not  the  content  of  my  highest  ideal 
change  with  the  changes  of  civilization?  Surely,  the 
content  expressed  by  the  concept  of  God  has  changed 
immensely  through  the  ages.  Whether  this  ^'highest 
good'^  shall  be  expressed  and  embodied  in  the  particular 
forms  and  institutions  which  now  seem  highest  to  the 
community,  this,  of  course,  is  more  than  doubtful.  Just 
as  in  the  past  men  of  spiritual  insight  and  ethical  reformers 
have  arisen,  whose  teachings  have  finally  changed  our 
standards  of  the  highest  social  good,  so  they  will  un- 
doubtedly arise  in  the  future.  The  change  of  content  in 
relation  to  the  actual  order,  and  the  adjustment  thereto, 
often  renders  perilous  and  tragic  the  way  of  the  spirit, 
yet  this  "warfare  of  the  spirif  is  perhaps  the  thing  of 
which  the  religious  life  of  our  generation  stands  most  in 
need.  Some  people  to-day  are  finding  war,  in  spite  of  its 
recognized  horrors,  more  inspiring  than  peace  for  this 
reason,  that  peace  (and  Christianity  is  a  religion  of  peace) 
seems  to  dwell  in  a  land  of  complacent  ease  and  plenty 
and  of  hberation  from  the  things  that  make  man  fear, 
while  war  is  a  challenge  to  an  intenser  life  and  to  a  su- 
preme renunciation.  Let  us  admit  that  there  is  an  ele- 
ment of  value  in  a  "Religion  of  Valor''  and  that  Nietzsche 
was  not  wholly  in  the  wrong  when  he  decried  passive 
virtues.  In  our  opening  chapter  we  saw  how  instinctive 
and  natural  to  man  is  the  ideaUstic  attitude,  but  now  we 
see,  also,  how  difiicult  on  the  supreme  levels  such  an  at- 
titude is.  It  is  only  by  strenuous  effort,  self-sacrifice  and 
loyalty,  and  in  the  fight  of  wisdom  and  in  singleness  of 
heart,  that  man  can  fift  himself  to,  and  keep  himself  on, 
these  heights.  This  is,  I  beUeve,  the  great  reason  why 
we  have  so  Httle  of  the  deepest,  most  spiritual  type  of  re- 


472  THE   DRAMA   OF  THE   SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

ligion.  We  may  have  a  religion  (so-called)  which  is  a  kind 
of  social-ethics,  and  we  have  an  emotional  mysticism,  but 
"the  religion  of  the  spirit"  which  sees  God  and  is  the  love 
of  God  we  feel  is  different  from  these.  If  religion  leads 
us  to  a  better  country  where  are  the  delectable  mountains 
of  our  dreams,  yet  since  religion  is,  as  we  have  seen,  a 
thing  of  our  everyday  life,  the  content  of  the  highest  good 
must  be  developed  in  relation  to  the  world  we  actually 
inhabit,  in  relation  to  our  fellow-beings  and  to  natural 
phenomena.  We  must  be  ready  to  meet  the  challenge  of 
hfe  and  the  discipline  of  the  wrestUngs  of  the  spirit.  In 
loyalty  to  our  ideal  some  things  have  to  be  eliminated. 
There  is  an  element  of  negation  in  life,  as  has  been  already 
suggested.  At  the  gateway  to  some  paths  stands  the 
angel  with  the  flaming  sword,  and  some  lives  must  be 
baptized  with  the  baptism  of  fire. 

But  whatever  the  changes  of  content  of  the  Ideal  when 
actualized  in  the  temporal  order,  something  which  is  per- 
manent and  eternal  abides.  It  is  this,  the  basic  fact  of 
religion  is  its  ideality,  and  man's  salvation  consists  in  his 
entire  devotion  to  an  ideal,  unseen  good,  as  failure  in  this 
is  his  deepest  sin.  The  Master  says  to  us,  "  Are  ye  so  soon 
weary  of  serving  the  Ideal  ?  '  What,  could  ye  not  watch 
with  me  one  hour  ?  '  '*  Such  is  the  life  of  the  spirit,  and 
when  we  are  transformed  into  it  we  begin  to  understand 
its  value  and  to  see  its  glory,  and  for  us  has  arisen  the 
dawn  of  the  New  Life. 

Becatise  men  have  come  to  see  the  supreme  value  for 
actual  living  of  this  religious  attitude,  and  of  the  enthu- 
siasm which  accompanies  it  and  the  renunciation  of  private 
pm-poses  which  it  makes  possible,  great  thinkers  ^  have 
proposed  to  retain  the  religious  attitude  while  abandoning 
what  they  hold  to  be  the  religious  superstition  of  the  real 
existence  of  religion's  highest  ideal  —  God.  I  consider 
this  to  be  an  impossible  position.^    Essential  to  a  re- 

1  For  example,  the  Hon.  Bertrand  Russell  in  his  essay  "  The  Essence 
of  Religion,"  in  the  Hibbert  Journal  of  October,  1912.  ■  See  Appendix. 
^  See  Appendix. 


THE   INDWELLING   OF  THE   SPIRIT  473 

ligious  experience  is  the  belief  in  the  real  existence  of  that 
good  in  whose  presence  is  fulness  of  life  and  the  trust  in 
whose  goodness  makes  possible  the  heroic  endurance  of 
all  ills,  as  well  as  the  attitude  of  renunciation  of  particular 
finite  joys.  If  I  am  right  that  the  fundamental  religious 
attitude  is  one  of  absolute  trust  in  God  through  all  ex- 
periences, of  joy  and  sorrow,  in  the  blackest  of  misfortunes, 
yes,  even  in  the  depth  of  the  abyss  of  sin,  then  reUgious 
experience  as  an  whole  must  be  a  state  of  serenity  and  of 
joy.  It  is  the  life  hid  with  Christ  in  God.  Such  a  re- 
ligious attitude,  however,  does  not  excuse  us  from  taking 
our  part  in  the  fight  against  the  evil  of  the  temporal  order. 
The  triumph  of  the  spirit  is  still  due  to  the  creative  will  — 
God's  will  manifest  in  man.  Surely,  the  world  is  often 
dark  enough  and  the  Way  of  Life  beset  with  many  diffi- 
culties, and  yet  the  religious  attitude  may  be  attained  by 
the  individual  at  every  temporal  moment. 

"When  He  giveth  quietness,  who  then  can  make  trouble!" 

How  in  the  cosmic  order  the  evil  of  life,  which  we  hold 
to  be  due  to  human,  voluntary  sin,  may  be  overcome  and 
reconciled,  the  Christian  church  has  set  forth  in  the  dogma 
of  the  atonement.^ 

"He  was  wounded  for  our  transgressions  and  with  His  stripes  we 
are  healed." 

When  the  chronicler,  whoever  he  may  have  been,  wrote 
these  words,  he  was  simply  reflecting  and  commenting 
upon  the  concrete  human  situation,  —  that  of  the  prophet 
in  relation  to  a  sinful  people,  —  and  it  is  a  common  human 
situation  that  the  innocent  suffer  for  and  with  the  guilty, 
and  their  suffering  and  the  insight  they  attain  enables 
them  to  be  revealers  of  new  truth  to  mankind,  and  doers 
of  such  deeds  as  will  win  new  and  higher  good  even  out  of 
the  heart  of  evil.  In  this  reconcilement,  to  make  it  com- 
plete, the  sinner's  will,  too,  must  in  time  come  to  have  its 
part. 

1  In  his  book   "The  Problem  of  Christianity,"  Professor  Royce 
has  translated  this  doctrine  for  us  into  human  and  universal  terms. 


474  THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

Shall  we  not  call  our  experience  (of  adversity)  good? 
That  depends  on  what  price  we  are  ready  to  pay  for  deeper 
insight  into  the  meaning  of  the  world,  for  awakened  hearts, 
for  greater  consequent  ability  to  serve  our  comrades,  and 
for  unfaltering  courage  to  further  meet  the  demands  of 
life.  Some  evil,  some  misfortune  is  inevitable.  Nothing 
that  we  can  do  can  change  it  or  drive  it  away.  It  is,  as 
we  say,  as  inevitable  as  a  decree  of  Fate,  but  rather  we 
should  say,  it  is  the  will  of  God  that  we  drink  the  bitter 
cup  to  the  dregs.  If  we  rebel  and  fight  against  it  (as  at 
first  poor  human  nature  can  hardly  help  doing),  we  miss 
its  blessing ;  and  so  it  is,  too,  if  we  try  to  escape  from  it 
by  flight  or  yield  to  it  in  weakness.  Our  part  in  the  face 
of  such  inevitable  ills  is  a  dauntless  acquiescence.  Who 
knows,  after  all,  what  chains  may  be  breaking  which  all 
unconsciously  we  had  forged  for  ourselves,  or  how  through 
calamity  and  acquiescence  our  souls  may  be  freed  to  live 
on  those  higher  spiritual  levels  to  which  we  were  blind 
in  our  unawakened  hours  of  ease?  On  those  levels  the 
light  is  shining 

"A  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land, 
The  consecration  and  the  poet's  dream." 

The  higher  religions  must  be  ethical,  and  so  the  goal 
which  the  religious  consciousness  seeks  can  be  no  place 
and  no  Utopia  of  our  earthly  life.  Neither  can  it  be  a 
mystical  state  of  consciousness  in  which  individuality 
perishes.  It  can  only  be  that  which  completes  or  is  the 
fully  realized  life  of  every  unique  and  morally  free  in- 
dividual. 

Religious  experience  depends,  as  we  have  seen,  alike 
on  thought,  wiU,  and  feeling,  and  the  reality  which  is  to 
respond  to  these  must  be  something  which  will  satisfy 
the  demands  of  each  of  these  characteristic  attitudes  of 
reUgious  experience.  The  only  sufficient  response  is  to 
be  found  in  supreme  personality. 

If  one  should  say,  such  a  God  is  too  high  and  abstract 


THE   INDWELLING   OF   THE   SPIRIT  475 

for  me,  I  cannot  attain  unto  him,  he  does  not  hear  my  cry 
or  answer  my  prayers,  to  such  an  one  we  can  reply  God  is 
in  truth  transcendent,  but  he  is  also  immanent ;  he  is  the 
absolute  and  eternal  fulfilment  which  is  the  ideal  of  every 
finite,  temporal  striving,  but  he  is  also  the  spirit  of  the 
striving  itself,  and  if  mediators  are  necessary  between 
you  and  God,  find  them  in  such  divinely  human  person- 
alities as  you  can  recognize.  For  God  reveals  himself 
above  all  in  the  purity  and  single-mindednessof  spirit  which 
seeks  the  ideal  good  alone,  and  in  the  divinely  self-sacri- 
ficing and  atoning  deeds  which  a  pure  love  of  God  inspires 
and  calls  forth. 

Finally,  then,  the  spiritual  man  lives  in  the  constant 
presence  of  the  invisible  and  eternal  and  this  is  a  real  and 
unchanging  and  ever-living  Presence.  Yet  man^s  task  is 
a  recurrent,  temporal  process;  it  is  an  ever-renewed 
achievement.  Thus  (as  far  as  it  rationally  may  be),  the 
religious  paradox  of  the  aesthetic-ethical  consciousness  is 
solved.  It  can  only  be  solved,  however,  in  the  light  of 
an  unseen,  yet  profoundly  real,  world. 

"We  men,  who  in  our  morn  of  youth  defied 
The  elements,  must  vanish.    Be  it  so : 
Enough,  if  something  from  our  hands  have  power 
To  live  and  act  and  serve  the  future  hour ; 
And  if,  as  toward  the  silent  tomb  we  go. 
Through  love,  through  hope,  and  faith's  transcendent  dower, 
We  feel  that  we  are  greater  than  we  know." 


APPENDIX! 

The  article  by  the  Honorable  Bertrand  Russell  in 
the  Hihbert  Journal  for  October,  1912,  calls,  I  think,  for  a 
protest.  For  inspiring  and  practically  helpful,  up  to  a 
certain  point,  as  the  view  taken  in  this  article  is,  and  close 
as  it  comes  to  a  true  interpretation  of  the  essence  of  re- 
ligion, it  yet  seems  to  fail  in  one  fundamental  respect. 

Mr.  Russell  rejoices  in  what  he  terms  ''the  undeniable 
fact"  that  all  the  dogmas  of  religion,  including  the  dogma 
which  asserts  the  existence  of  God,  have  been  rejected  and 
are  decaying,  yet  he  holds  that  it  is  essential  to  retain  the 
religious  attitude ^  for  ''bare  morality"  will  never  be  a 
sufficiently  potent  motive  to  right  action. 

There  are  in  religion  (or  in  Christianity),  says  Mr. 
Russell,  three  elements  which  should  be  retained.  These 
three  are  worship,  acquiescence,  and  love.  Worship  (or 
may  we  not  say  more  generally  —  religious  experience) 
is  of  two  fundamental  kinds :  (1)  "selective  worship"  — 
an  attitude  towards  an  ideal  good  or  absolute  perfection ; 
and  (2)  "impartial  worship  "  of  the  existent,  or  the  attitude 
of  faith  that  the  absolute  good  exists,  and  that  man  longs 
to,  ought  to,  and,  as  the  mystics  say,  does  actually  unite 
himself  to  this  good.  In  religions  which  believe  in  the 
existence  of  God  these  two  forms  of  worship  are  united. 

Now,  in  our  modern  world  of  scientific  interpretation, 
Mr.  Russell  says  in  effect,  it  is  quite  possible  to  maintain 
the  first  attitude  —  that  of  selective  worship,  for  the  ideal 
of  perfection  is  a  creation  of  the  constructive  imagination, 
and  this  ideal  inspires  man  to  work  for  its  actuality  in 
the  world,  where  as  actually  embodied  it  is  always  more 
or  less  imperfect. 

1  This  *  note '  was  written  in  November,  1912. 
477 


478  APPENDIX 

Because  the  good  is  only  ideal,  however,  to  hold  this 
attitude  alone  gives  man  the  sense  of  exile  in  a  world  of 
shadows.  Hence  the  other  kind  of  worship  —  the  wor- 
ship which  is  only  given  to  what  exists,  is  essential.  Yet 
we  cannot  hold,  as  Christianity,  for  example,  does,  that 
the  absolute  good  exists.  The  tragic  facts  of  life,  and  the 
interpretations  of  science,  are  at  variance  with  such  a 
belief.  Since,  then,  we  must  have  this  sense  of  union  with 
the  existent,  as  religion  abundantly  testifies,  man  must 
unite  himself  in  non-selective  worship  and  love  to  what- 
ever does  exist. 

This  attitude  of  ^ impartial  worship,*'  as  Mr.  Russell 
calls  it,  finally  reduces,  I  think,  to  a  love  or  worship  of  life 
itself,  of  "the  Ufe  force"  or  "life  energy,"  wholly  apart, 
of  course,  from  the  judgment  that  this  "life"  is  good. 

Now  we  cannot  say  that  this  attitude  ^  is  non-religious, 
for  it  has  been  found  in  some  religious  cults,  for  example 
in  those  Oriental  mystery-cults  and  forms  of  worship 
such  as  the  worship  of  the  Great  Mother  with  which  Chris- 
tianity had  to  contend  for  supremacy  in  the  early  days  of 
its  existence. 

The  worship  of  life  itself,  then — hfe  morally  indifferent, 
is  found  in  rehgious  experience.  What  I  would  maintain 
is  that  this  is  not  a  spiritual  attitude,  is  not  found  in  the 
higher  or  spiritual  types  of  rehgion,  cannot  be  combined 
with  the  selective  kind  of  worship,  and  is  not  desirable  to 
encourage  as  a  fundamental  attitude  or  attitude  of  wor- 
ship. It  is  a  kind  of  neo-pagan  attitude  which  we  find 
extolled  in  many  of  the  pages  of  the  reforming  essayists 
and  writers  of  fiction  of  the  twentieth  century.  In  the 
higher  rehgions  the  distinction  between  good  and  evil  is 
retained  and  the  universe  as  a  whole  or  in  essence  is  held  to 
be  good.   That  is,  the  absolute  or  ideal  good  is  also  existent. 

Mr.  Russell,  I  think,  tacitly  admits  that  the  ethical 
attitude  is  really  the  fundamental  attitude  to  which  the 

1  To-day  it  appears  to  be  taking  a  rather  dififerent  form,  i.e.  as  the 
worship  of  the  pushing,  striving  "will  to  live." 


APPENDIX  479 

other  (the  impartial  worship  of  whatever  exists)  must  be 
subordinated,  when  he  says:  "Only  the  ideal  good  can 
fully  satisfy  our  hunger  for  perfection^'  —  and  yet,  "when 
this  worship  stands  alone  it  produces  a  sense  of  exile  in  a 
world  of  shadows,  of  infinite  soHtude  amid  aUen  forces." 
"Only  in  the  complete  union  of  the  two  could  the  soul  find 
permanent  rest.''  ReUgion  is  forever  trying  to  unite  the 
two  forms  of  worship  by  "making  more  good  exist  and 
more  existence  good,"  or  again,  "The  worship  of  the  good 
is  the  greater  of  the  two  conmciandments  (love  to  God  and 
love  of  man)  since  it  leads  us  to  know  that  love  of  man  is 
good  and  this  knowledge  helps  us  to  feel  the  love  of  man." 
(This  asserts,  if  we  were  without  the  love  of  the  good  there 
would  be  no  special  reason  for  the  love  of  the  existent.) 
Are  not  the  two  attitudes,  then,  really  interdependent? 
Must  not  the  absolute  good  somehow  exist  in  man  and  in 
the  world  if  we  are  to  love  anything  existent  at  all  ?  The 
ethical  judgment,  it  appears,  is  fundamental  and  logically 
prior.  But  if  we  ought  to  love  the  absolute  good,  is  not 
something  more  implied  in  such  a  demand? 

In  a  word,  does  it  not  involve  us  in  a  contradiction  to 
hold  that  the  love  of  the  good  is  essential  and  that  we 
cannot  unite  ourselves  in  love  to  the  world  without  it, 
though  we  must  love  (worship  or  unite  ourselves  to) 
something  which  exists;  and  yet  at  the  same  time  to  hold 
that  the  good  itself  does  not  exist  but  dwells  in  a  world 
apart  —  a  world  of  the  creative  imagination  only,  which 
is  without  connection  with  the  actual  world  ? 

Why,  on  the  one  hand,  should  we  feel  any  obligation  to 
love  the  existent,  indifferent  world ;  or  why,  on  the  other, 
if  we  love  the  indifferent,  existing  world,  should  we  love 
the  absolute  good?  If,  as  a  matter  of  actual  fact,  we  do 
love  both,  what  does  this  inclusive  attitude  signify? 

The  contradiction  arises,  I  think,  from  an  underlying 
assumption  which  Mr.  Russell  keeps  in  the  background 
but  which  appears  in  the  following  lines  which  Mr.  Russell 
introduces  in  relation  to  the  attitude  of  acquiescence. 


480  APPENDIX 

'^We  cannot,"  Mr.  Russell  says,  ''feel  indignation  against 
evils  for  which  no  one  is  responsible.  When  it  is  realized 
that  the  fundamental  evils  are  due  to  the  blind  empire 
of  matter,  and  are  the  wholly  necessary  effect  of  forces 
which  have  no  consciousness  and  are,  therefore,  neither 
good  nor  bad  in  themselves,  indignation  becomes  absurd, 
like  Xerxes  chastising  the  Hellespont." 

Mr.  Russell  has  written  with  special  beauty  and  truth 
(or  what  would  be  truth  on  a  different,  metaphysical 
basis)  about  the  reUgious  attitude  of  acquiescence  in  the 
irrevocable  and  the  inevitable,  and  yet,  here  again,  are 
we  not  led  to  a  contradictory  position  ?  If  the  inevitable 
evil  is  due  to  bhnd  fate  or  to  chance  forces  which  we  cannot 
in  any  way  square  with  our  love  of  perfection  or  our  moral 
judgment  of  what  ought  to  be,  is  acquiescence  possible? 
that  is,  an  acquiescence  which  can  in  any  sense  be  called 
free,  moral,  or  religious  acquiescence  ?  Were  not  a  Prome- 
thean defiance  of  the  universe  a  nobler  and  more  justifiable 
attitude?  To  be  sure,  submission  or  annihilation  are  in 
a  fate-ridden  world  the  only  really  possible  alternative  at- 
titudes in  accord  with  reason.  Any  other  attitude  would 
be,  indeed,  as  Mr.  Russell  says,  absurd.  But  is  it  reason- 
able to  demand  that  we  work  for  the  achievement  of  the 
good  in  such  a  world  where  the  distinction  is  of  no  final 
value  and  where  the  good  cannot  possibly  triumph  or 
make  any  real  difference  in  the  end? 

Mr.  Russell  holds  that  we  must  work  to  advance  the 
good  in  the  world  and  make  it  prevail  (no  doubt  to  a  great 
extent  at  present  we  can  trust  to  our  instincts  and  training 
to  do  this)  yet  theoretically,  and  from  a  religious  point  of 
view,  he  says  we  must  abandon  ''any  demand  that  the 
universe  shall  conform  to  our  standards,"  we  must  ac- 
quiesce in  it  as  it  is. 

We  are  forced  to  ask  again :  Is  it  possible  to  find  satis- 
faction; is  it  possible  really  "to  live  in  the  infinite" 
(p.  60)  at  all,  if  we  can  do  so  only  by  abandoning  our 
fundamental,  ethical  judgment  of  what  is  best  in  relation 


APPENDIX  481 

to  a  final  interpretation  of  what  the  universe  means 
and  is? 

I  do  not  think  that  this  is  a  possible  attitude,  and  the 
difficulty  arises,  it  seems  to  me,  from  the  assumption  on 
which  Mr.  Russell  builds,  the  assumption,  namely,  that 
the  interpretation  of  science  is  ultimate.  The  scientific 
interpretation  that  the  existent  universe  is  morally  in- 
different leads  in  the  end  to  the  view  that  blind  fate  gov- 
erns the  world.  Now  although  I  quite  agree  with  Mr. 
Russell  that  our  distinctions  between  good  and  bad  as 
applied  to  the  universe  as  a  whole  are  ^' human,  all  too 
human,"  yet  the  legitimate  outcome  of  such  a  meta- 
physical or  final  interpretation  as  the  above  can  only  be 
an  attitude  of  defiance  or  despair.  It  leads  inevitably  to 
pessimism  and  to  nihilism.  On  such  a  foundation  the 
essentially,  that  is,  the  spiritually,  religious  attitude  (unless 
to  be  sure  blindly  held  to  in  despite  of  reason)  could  not 
but  perish. 


2i 


INDEX 


Absolute  experience,  for  Bradley,  383. 

Absolute  good,  for  Russell,  481. 

Absolute  ideal,  realization  of,  sought 
by  spiritual  religion,  35 ;  held  to  be 
an  actual  experience  by  religion,  36. 

Absolute  self,  the  concept  of  God  and 
the,  6 ;  of  self-representative  system, 
397 ;   unifier  of  all  experience,  432. 

Absolute  will,  surrender  of  finite  will 
to,  342. 

Addams,  Jane,  355  note. 

Adler,  Felix,  poem  by,  quoted  on 
social  religious  consciousness,  199- 
120. 

.^neas,  prayer  of,  277. 

iEsthetic-ethical,  values,  440-442 ; 
two  solutions  of  religious  paradox 
considered,  445  ;  consciousness,  solu- 
tion from  point  of  view  of  finite 
world  impossible,  468 ;  conscious- 
ness, only  solution  possible  is  in 
light  of  unseen  but  real  world,  475. 

iEsthetic  experience,  not  identical  with 
religious  experience,  43-44 ;  for 
Schopenhauer,  394 ;  value  of,  429 ; 
and  ethical  experience,  87-90. 

Aitken,  W.,  mystical  prayer  of,  289. 

Ames,  Charles  Scribner,  quoted  on 
religion  in  primitive  societies,  110, 
111,  112 ;  "Psychology  of  Religious 
Experience"  by,  quoted  on  social 
institutions  as  outer  source  of  re- 
ligion, 176. 

Amos,  Hebrew  Prophet,  quoted,  26. 

Andrew,  S.,  of  Crete,  poem  by,  illus- 
trating motor  type  of  religious 
consciousness,  97. 

Angelo,  Michael,  Last  Judgment  fresco 
by,  57. 

Animism,  universal  basis  of  definite 
religious  belief,  14;  and  nature 
worship   in   early   religions,    272. 

Antigone,  example  of  individual  test 
of  right,  169. 

Antin,  Mary,  "The  Promised  Land," 
452  note ;  quoted  on  magic  formulae 
and  spells,  264. 

Appreciative  attitude,  362 ;  our  need 
of,  363  ;    essentially  religious,  364  ; 


contrasted  with  scientific  attitude, 
467  note. 

Aquinas,  St.  Thomas,  on  grace,  163- 
164;  prayer  for  spiritual  blessing 
by,  282 ;  on  prayer  in  the  "  Summa," 
287. 

Aristotle,  his  criterion  of  the  typical  or 
moral  normal  man,  76;  the  "one" 
in  the  system  of,  371. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  poem  by,  quoted  on 
prayer  in  tribulation,  316. 

Artistic  temperament  cannot  adjust 
itself  to  a  science-ridden  world,  467. 
See  Appreciative  attitude. 

Atonement,  72-73 ;  individual  co- 
operation necessary,  79;  endless, 
80 ;  dogma  of,  is  result  of  life  ex- 
perience, 162;  religion  of  sorrow 
and,  403;  artist  example  of  invol- 
untary vicarious,  468;  Christian 
dogma  of,  473. 

Attitude,  of  acquiescence,  Russell  on, 
479-480;  of  man  towards  world, 
439. 

Augustine,  St.,  quoted  on  essence  of 
religion,  22 ;  City  of  Satan  and  City 
of  God,  63 ;  description  of  mystical 
experience  by,  92 ;  dual  relation  in 
individual  religious  experience  illus- 
trated in  "  Confessions  "  of,  107 ;  his 
Doctrine  of  Grace,  128-129 ;  Doc- 
trine of  Sin  and  Grace,  147-148; 
on  freedom  and  necessity,  151 ; 
prayer  of,  quoted,  286;  mystical 
prayer  of,  288-289 ;  loyalty  to  the 
ideal,  391,  414 ;  "  Confessions  "  of, 
quoted  on  prayer  experience  in  case 
of  sin  and  sorrow,  319-320 ;  quoted 
on  surrender  to  the  ideal,  417; 
prayers  by,  emphasizing  personality 
of  ideal,  419-420. 

Aurelius,  Marcus,  "Meditations" 
quoted  on  world  weariness  and 
disillusionment,  49-50 ;  quoted  on 
ethical  consciousness  of  Stoics,  101 ; 
quoted  on  social  element  in  Stoicism, 
120-121 ;  views  on  eternal-temporal 
life,  223-225;  solution  of  evil  for, 
374-375. 


483 


484 


INDEX 


Auto  and  social  suggestion,  preserves 
old  world  magic  compulsion,  333 ; 
their  part  in  prayer,  336. 

Babylon,  religious  texts  and  incanta- 
tions of,  269-270. 

Babylonian  Penitential  Psalm,  quoted, 
278. 

Bakewell,  "Source  Book  in  Ancient 
Philosophy,"  374-379. 

Baldwin,  Mark,  "Social  and  Ethical 
Interpretations"  cited  on  relation 
of  genius  to  society,  139. 

Balfour,  A.  H.,  quoted  on  matter 
consciousness,  382. 

Bangs,  John  Kendrick,  quotation 
from,    29. 

Beauty,  448-450;  social,  an  end  in 
itself,  448 ;  true  expression  of  * '  many 
in  one,"  449 ;  a  perfect  whole,  450 ; 
an  essential  element  ignored  by 
science,  467. 

Begbie,  H.,  "Twice-Born  Men"  cited, 
56 ;    on  religious  experience,  420. 

Benedictine  Monks,  social  work  of, 
.  230-231. 

Benson,  A.  C,  "Beside  StiU  Waters" 
by,  cited,  361. 

Bergson,  Henri,  "Creative  Evolution" 
by,  quoted,  258  note;  the  "one 
and  many"  for,  379-381,  386;  on 
change,  432. 

**  Better  self,"  its  content,  321 ;  iden- 
tified with  subliminal  consciousness 
by  James,  322 ;  in  each  one  is  God, 
420. 

Blake,  William,  his  creed  was  anarchy, 
184. 

Bolton,  T.  L.,  rhythm  of  sense  stimuli, 
462  note. 

"Book  of  Daniel  Drew,"  cited  on 
separation  of  religion  and  morality, 
133-134 ;  quoted,  on  experience  of 
"grace,"  142. 

Bradley,  F.  H.,  on  subliminal  con- 
sciousness, 324;  "one  and  many" 
for,  382-384,  386;  value  of  our 
failures,  405. 

Brahmanism,  idea  of  mutability  in, 
compared  with  present  idea,  433. 

Breasted,  J.  H.,  "Religion  and 
Thought  in  Ancient  Egypt"  cited 
on  idealizing  tendency,  5-6 ;  cited 
on  hope  and  fear,  9 ;  cited,  15  note. 

Bronte,  Emily,  "Wuthering  Heights" 
by,  quoted,  87 ;  "  The  Old  Stoic  "  by, 
quoted  on  individual  effort,  134-135. 

Brooks,  Phillips,  Grace  requires  in- 
dividual cooperation,  79 ;  hymn  by, 
quoted,  46. 


Browning,  Elizabeth  Barrett,  "  Aurora 
Leigh,"  cited  on  tragedy  of  genius, 
88 ;  quoted  on  sense  of  the  contra- 
dictions of  life,  361 ;  quoted  on  inner 
and  outer  in  religious  life,  423. 

Browning,  Robert,  quoted  on  need  and 
vision  as  sources  of  religious  experi- 
ence, 2 ;  "Saul"  by,  quoted  on  vica- 
rious atonement,  20  ;  quoted  on  sin, 
77 ;  his  poetry  illustrates  ethical 
type  of  religious  consciousness,  99 ; 
"Pippa  Passes"  cited,  161  note; 
"Ring  and  The  Book,"  quoted  on 
source  of  religious  experience,  207. 

Buddha,  example  of  synthetic  func- 
tion of  reason,  23-24 ;  experience  of, 
213-214 ;  opposition  between  mysti- 
cal and  practical  experiences  for, 
341-342. 

Buddhism,  pessimistic  attitude  due 
to  transitoriness  of  life,  48,  49 ;  goal 
of,  described  in  terms  of  contrast  to 
present  finite  state,  50-51 ;  religious 
attitude  of,  61 ;  religious  opposition 
for,  62 ;  expression  of  the  triadic 
form  of  the  religious  experience,  84 ; 
ultimate  ethical  elements  of,  100- 
101 ;  need  of  solitude,  105 ;  social 
religious  consciousness  in,  120 ;  em- 
phasis on  individual  effort,  135-136 ; 
account  of,  212-223 ;  fundamental 
difficulty  with  temporal  life  for,  223 ; 
permanence  sought  by,  compared 
with  permanence  sought  by  reli- 
gion of  to-day,  436. 

Bunyan,  John,  type  of  sinner,  75; 
cited  on  suggestions  from  the  sub- 
liminal consciousness,  302. 

Carlyle,  T.,  on  individual  experience, 
110. 

Carver,  Thomas  N.,  "A  Religion 
Worth  Having"  cited  on  practical 
value  of  religion  apart  from  its 
essence,  45 ;  religion  a  scientific 
asset,  465. 

Catholic  Church,  social  organization 
of,  231-232. 

Chance,  443,  444,  448. 

Change,  prevalence  of,  250 ;  aspects 
of,  for  the  religious  consciousness, 
251-253 ;  impulse  to,  a  form  of  an 
universal  human  tendency,  252 ; 
nature  of,  253  ;  its  reality  demand- 
ed by  the  moral  consciousness,  253- 
254 ;  as  the  one  reality,  265  ;  con- 
sequences of  this  idea,  256-257; 
essential  to  man's  moral  growth, 
438. 

Character,  423. 


INDEX 


485 


Christian  experience,  religious  opposi- 
tion in,  63 ;  expression  of  triadic 
form  of  the  religious  experience,  84. 

Christian  hymnology,  describes  ideal 
goal  in  terms  contrasting  with  pres- 
ent existence,  52-54. 

Christian  Monasticism,  flight  from  time 
worid,  225-228. 

Christian  Science,  form  of  religious 
mysticism  of  the  day,  37. 

Christianity,  mystical  element  in, 
giving  way  to  social  and  ethical, 
61 ;  comparison  with  mystery 
religions,  400. 

Church  Year,  a  cycle,  179. 

Columbus,  Christopher,  cited  on  de- 
votion to  an  ideal,  11. 

"Common  Law,"  by  Justice  Holmes, 
quoted,  142  note. 

Communion,  examples  of  this  type  of 
prayer,  285-290. 

Confessional  prayer,  and  examples  of, 
290-292. 

Conscious  will,  essence  of,  142. 

Consciousness,  hymns  for  public  wor- 
ship express  the  collective,  113; 
Bergson  on,  379-381. 

Consciousness  of  sin,  social,  55 ;  three 
classes  of,  66,  69. 

Cook,  Sir  Edward,  "Life  of  Florence 
Nightingale  "  cited,  11. 

Cosmic  opposition,  58. 

Cranch,  Christopher  P.,  poem  by, 
quoted  on  discoordination  in 
modern  life,  361-362. 

Creative  impulse,  3,  352. 

Criminal  class,  two  types  of,  74. 

Cyclic  processes,  in  religion,  177 ; 
examples  of,  178-181 ;  significance 
and  results  of,  181 ;  contrasted 
with  serial  processes,  181-182 ; 
element  common  to  both,  182 ; 
tension  and  conflict  between,  183- 
184 ;  arise  from  a  sense  of  imper- 
fection and  the  need  for  expression, 
199  ;  as  symbols,  203. 

Dante,  on  sinners,  71  note ;  illustration 
in  "Divine  Comedy"  of  motor  type 
of  religious  consciousness,  97 ; 
"great  white  rose  of  Paradise," 
instance  of  social  religious  con- 
sciousness, 119;  quotation  on 
meaning  and  destiny  of  man,  143 ; 
quotation  from  "Purgatorio"  on 
penitence,  281-282 ;  mediatory 
prayers  in  "  Purgatorio,"  292 ;  ver- 
sion of  Lord's  Prayer,  294 ;  isola- 
tion of  solitary  individual  in  the 
"Inferno,"  367 ;  "  Inferno"  cited  on 


religion  of  sorrow  and  atonement, 
403  note;  "Divine  Comedy" 
quoted  on  Divine  love,  408. 

Dawson,  George,  mystical  prayer  of,  289. 

"Death  a  Glad  Release,"  quoted  on 
flight  from  the  world,  192. 

Democracy,  the  new  emphasis  on  the 
many,  344. 

Deussen,  Paxil,  "The  Philosophy  of 
the  Upanishads  "  quoted,  372-373. 

Dewey  and  Tufts,  "Ethics"  quoted  on 
modern  aim  of  perfection  in  tem- 
poral world,  232. 

Dickenson,  Lowes'  "The  Greek  View 
of  Life,"  392. 

Dill,  S.,  "Roman  Society,"  36  note. 

Divination,  as  form  of  prayer,  294- 
297,  334. 

Doddridge,  Philip,  hymn  by,  illustra- 
ting motor  type  of  religious  con- 
sciousness, 97. 

Dostoieffsky,  "Crime  and  Punish- 
ment" quoted  on,  repentance,  72; 
on  prayer  experience,  335. 

Dualism,  universal  problem,  431-432 ; 
in  the  world  of  art  according  to 
Nietzsche,  432^33 ;  in  relation 
to  temporal-eternal  problem,  433 ; 
in  relation  to  static-dynamic  pro- 
blem, 432-437. 

Dynamic,  element  in  changing  insti- 
tutions and  opinions,  252 ;  and 
dramatic  world  demanded  by  moral 
consciousness,  253-254 ;  true  mean- 
ing of,  as  destinct  from  change, 
257-258;  of  prayer,  337;  and 
static  as  forms  of  Way  of  Life, 
208.     See  Static. 

Easter,  real  significance  of  its  sym- 
bolism, 444. 

Eckhart,  description  of  mystical  ex- 
perience by,  92 ;  on  the  "One,"  343. 

Eclipses,  296-297. 

Efficacy  of  prayer,  327-331,  333. 

Egyptian  Book  of  the  Dead,  hymns 
illustrating  incantations,  mystic 
formulae,  etc.,  367-369. 

Eliot,  George,  "  Middlemarch "  cited 
on  endless  consequences  of  sin, 
80;  "unearned  increment"  of 
natural  gifts,  154-155  ;  on  '  'grace," 
157;  on  sorrow  in  religion,  162; 
prayer  from  "Adam  Bede"  by, 
290 ;  on  immortality,  399. 

Embodiment  in  external  form  essen- 
tial to  religion,  189. 

Emerson,  R.  W.,  "Over-soul"  by, 
cited  on  recognition  of  difference 
between     evil     and     good,     58; 


486 


INDEX 


"Saadi"  by,  quoted  on  mystic's 
need  of  solitude,  104-105;  "Wor- 
ship" by,  illustrates  "unique" 
consciousness,  110;  "Inspiration" 
by,  cited  on  cases  of  genius,  157; 
on  external  embodiment  of  religion, 
189;  "Mayday"  by,  quoted  on 
ultimate  relation  of  inner  and  outer, 
204;  on  prayer,  328 ;  "Over-soul" 
by,  quoted  on  efficacy  of  prayer, 
333;  "Friendship"  by,  quoted  on 
personal  attitude,  357  ;  "Brahma" 
by,  373  ;   idea  of  the  universe,  460. 

Environment,  affects  man  as  chance 
and  accident,  145 ;  as  suggestion, 
145-146. 

Epictetus,  on  good  and  evil,  373-374. ' 

Epicureanism,  reality  the  experience  of 
the  moment,  43 ;  attitude  toward 
time,  211. 

Erasmus,  cited  on  devotion  to  an  ideal, 
9. 

Eternal,  longing  for  the,  exemplified 
in  Buddhism,  212-223;  in  Mo- 
nasticism,  225-228;  attitude  criti- 
cised by  morality  and  ethical  re- 
ligion, 229;  danger  of  its  being 
superseded  by  "social  whole"  of 
the  actual  present,  235 ;  needs  the 
temporal,  238-239 ;  this  need  illus- 
trated by  various  religions,  245 ; 
the  beatitude  of  the  religious  con- 
sciousness is  dependent  on  a  way 
of  life  in  a  temporal  world,  246. 

Eternal  Christ,  ideal  of  to-day,  20. 

Ethical,  and  mystical,  a  religious  prob- 
lem, 366,  see  mystical ;  religion, 
requires  salvation  by  merit,  134 ; 
protests  against  "eternal  attitude," 
229;  religious  consciousness,  94- 
103 ;  its  ideal  infinitely  removed, 
94-95;  contrasted  with  mystical 
consciousness,  94;  demands  a 
teleological  process,  241-242;  reli- 
gious ideal,  expressed  in  motor 
terms,  96-99 ;  values,  not  justifi- 
able by  external  form  of  authority, 
171 ;  vs.  aesthetic  values,  448 
Process,  serial  and  dramatic,  203 
aspect  of  all  historic  religions,  395 
Way  of  Life,  difficulties  involved, 
395 ;  Attitude,  its  consiunmation 
is  in  the  aesthetic,  451. 

Ethical  culture  movement,  religious 
character  of,  119. 

Ethics,  value  to  religion,  427. 

Euripides  in  the  "Bacchae"  cited  on 
flight  from  the  world,   191. 

Evil,  problem  of,  61,  402;  beyond 
power  of  science  to  prevent,  466. 


Faber,  description  of  mystical  ex- 
perience by,  93. 

Faith,  of  the  repentant  sinner,  80 ; 
Paul's  doctrine  of  justification  by, 
150-151 ;  man's  unconquerable, 
455. 

Fate,  in  Russell's  scientific  interpreta- 
tion, 480-481. 

Fear,  as  source  of  religious  experience, 
6-7. 

F6n61on,  Franpois  de  la  Mothe, 
mystical  prayer  of,  quoted,  288; 
on  the  perfect  self,  414. 

Finite,  surrender  to  absolute  will  of 
finite  individual  will,  342 ;  unifying 
principle  between  infinite  and,  464. 

Flight  from  the  world,  examples  of, 
191-192 ;    danger  of,  234. 

Forgiveness,  69-73,  134. 

Frazer,  J.  G.,  "The  Golden  Bough" 
by,  19 ;  cited  on  magic  incanta- 
tions, 265,  266,  271. 

Freedom,  of  the  will  in  relation  to  sin, 
74-76 ;  for  William  James,  78 ;  and 
determinism  for  Augustine  and 
Paul,  151-153,  see  necessity;  for 
Kant,  153,  165 ;  final  meaning  of, 
165-167  ;  extent  of  man's,  437-438. 

Free-will,  meaning  of,  155,  165. 

Galsworthy,  John,  "The  Country 
House"  quoted,  33  note;  "Strife" 
and  "Justice"  cited  on  social  con- 
sciousness of  sin,  55  note;  "Jus- 
tice" cited  on  conflict  between 
individual  responsibility  and  orig- 
inal sin,  143-144. 

Genius,  87-88 ;  tragedy  of,  exemplified 
by  Shelley,  "Aurora  Leigh,"  Alice 
Brown's  "The  Man  and  the 
Militant,"  etc.,  88 ;  relation  of, 
to  the  community,  138-141 ;  cited 
in   Emerson's    "Inspiration,"    157. 

God,  concept  of,  6;  relation  to  man 
in  teachings  of  Jesus,  16 ;  of  Hebrew 
Prophets,  17 ;  evolution  in  con- 
ception of,  13,  472  ;  the  Ever-living 
Presence,  474-475 ;  existence  of, 
rejected  by  Russell,  477. 

Goethe,  inspiration  of  genius,  140 ; 
"Faust"  by,  cited,  77;  quoted 
on  mystical  experience,  94  ;  quoted 
on  ethical  type  of  religious  con- 
sciousness, 100 ;  quoted  on  in- 
dividual effort,  133 ;  Gretchen's 
prayer  quoted,  280-281 ;  symbolic 
of  Romantic  movement,  347-348. 

Grace,  essential  to  man's  salvation,  79 ; 
demands  individual  cooperation, 
79 ;     an    indwelling    presence    yet 


INDEX 


487 


beyond  individual's  power,  124— 
125 ;  in  the  Upanishads,  126-127 ; 
in  the  Psalms,  127-128;  in  the 
Christian  church  and  for  poets, 
128;  Augustine's  doctrine  of,  128- 
129 ;  for  St.  Paul,  130  ;  hymns  on, 
131-132 ;  meaning  and  definitions 
of,  158 ;  of  God,  160-161 ;  for  St. 
Thomas  Aquinas,  163  ;  final  mean- 
ing of,  164-165. 

Grace  and  merit,  124-141 ;  essence  of 
salvation  for,  133 ;  summary  of 
the  opposition,  137-138. 

Grace  and  Salvation,  158-159. 

Grace  and  Sin,  for  St.  Augustine, 
147-148;    for  St.  Paul,  148-150. 

Greek  State,  a  concrete  embodiment 
of  the  many  in  one,  392. 

Gregory,  St.,  quoted  on  instability  of 
life,  251. 

Grenfell,  Dr.,  "What  Life  Means  for 
Me,"  cited  on  popular  way  of  life, 
421. 

"Growing  God,"  characteristic  of 
active  attitude  of  to-day,  254. 

Guiney,  Louise  Imogen,  poem  by,  on 
ethical  type  of  religious  experience, 
102-103. 

Guyon,  Mme.,  mystical  experience 
described  by,  93. 

Habit,  380-381. 

Halevy,     Daniel,  "Life    of    Friedrich 

Nietzsche"  by,  370  note. 
Hamlet,  quoted  on  repentance,  73. 
Hampde,  Richard   BoUe  de,  mystical 

experience  described  by,  93. 
Happiness,  versus  duty,  442-443 ;  two 

possible  answers  to  problem,  443- 

445. 
Hardy,  Thomas,  "Jude  the  Obscure" 

quoted  on  devotion  to  an  embodied 

ideal,    10—11 ;     quotation   on   need 

of  the  personal  element,  355-356. 
Harnack,  quoted  on  freedom  of  will,  153. 
Harrison,      Jane,      "Prolegomena     to 

Greek  Religion"  cited  on  orphism, 

84    note ;      quoted    on    petitional 

prayer,  276. 
Hawthorne,  "Marble  Faun"  cited  on 

religious    experience   in    a    church, 

118  note. 
Hay,     John,     poem     by,     illustrating 

"religion  of  humanity,"   188. 
Hebrew  prophets,  religious  opposition 

for,     62 ;      relation    of    individual 

judgment  of,  to  social  judgment, 

173. 
Henley,    quotation   by,   on  individual 

effort,  134. 


Herbert,   George,   Life  of,   by  G.  H. 

Palmer,    cited,    107;     poems    by, 

quoted,  107-108. 
Herd  morality,  result  of,  according  to 

Nietzsche,  359. 
Hidery,  prayer  of,  277-278. 
Hindoo  prayer,  263  note;    286. 
Hocking,    W.    E.,    "The    Meaning   of 

God      in      Human      Experience" 

quoted   on  religious   attitude,   360 

note ;    cited  on  the  mystic's  inner 

experience,  452  note. 
Homer's  Ulysses  cited  on  motor  type 

of  religious  consciousness,  97. 
Horace's    Carmen    XXII    quoted    on 

escape  from  time  world,  225. 
Hugo,   Victor,   "La  Fiancee  du  Tim- 

balier"    by,    quoted    on    sacrificial 

rites,  284. 
Hunt's  "Abou  Ben  Adhem"  expresses 

social  service  ideal,  347. 

Ibsen's  Peer  Gynt,  example  of  a  man 
without  an  ideal,  10  ;  Hedda  Gabler, 
Nora  Helmer,  Rebecca  West,  rebels 
against  laws  of  society,  351-352. 

Ideal,  "Having  an,"  9;  embodiment 
of  the,  10-12 ;  changing  content 
of  man's,  12-13 ;  essential  to  man 
and  the  religious  consciousness, 
413 ;  its  content  and  implications, 
414-416 ;  content  of  the  religious 
experience  interpreted  in  terms  of 
man's  ultimate,  416-418 ;  needs 
personal  embodiment,  419 ;  way 
of  winning  the,  421 ;  objective 
reality  of  the,  456 ;  loyalty  to  the, 
470. 

IdeaUstic  attitude,  danger  of,  455. 

Ideality,  of  man,  essential  source  of 
religion,  6 ;  of  religion,  a  permanent 
fact,  21 ;  resultant  propositions, 
21-22,  42-47;  the  ground  of  spir- 
itual religion,  454. 

Idealizing  tendency,  of  children,  poets, 
and  speculative  scientists,  4-5. 

Ideals,  man's  distinctive  quality  is 
his  power  to  form,  1 ;  man  a 
creator  of,  2 ;  inspirers  of  conduct, 
306. 

Idolatry,  the  danger  of,  189. 

Imitative  magic,  264. 

Immediacy,  alone  is  not  religion,  41- 
45 ;  one  element  of  religious 
experience,  453. 

Immortality,  concept  of,  398 ;  two 
motives  in  desire  for,   399-402. 

Inca  of  Peru,  petitional  prayer  of, 
278. 

Indian  Daily  Prayer  for  World,  292. 


488 


INDEX 


Indian  Prayer,  277. 

Individual,  religious  consciousness,  ex- 
amples of,  103-1 10 ;  self-dependent 
type  of,  expressed  by  Stoic  Seneca, 
105-106;  dual  type  of,  106-107; 
type  for  master  minds,  108-109 ; 
uniqueness  of,  199-110. 

Individual,  will,  and  the  universal, 
social  will,  146;  judgment,  as 
standard  of  right,  171 ;  its  relation 
to  social  judgment,  172-173 ; 
experience,  rapture  and  enlighten- 
ment of  the,  342. 

Individualism,  characteristic  of  present 
age,  254-255;    353. 

Inner,  life,  given  outward  expression 
becomes  a  cyclic  process,  183 ; 
highest  outward  manifestation  of, 
religious  spirit,  198  ;  experience  of, 
religious  life  is  unique,  199. 

Inner  and  outer,  aspects  of  religion, 
175-177 ;  a  form  of  the  problem  of 
mind  and  body,  189-190 ;  forms  of 
reconciliation  or  compromise,  191- 
196 ;  unsatisfactoriness  of  these 
forms,  196 ;  viewed  as  reality  and 
appearance,  200 ;  tendencies  are 
contrary  and  conflicting,  200 ;  re- 
sult of  synthesis  of  the  two  tenden- 
cies, 201 ;  interdependence  of,  202  ; 
relations  expressed  by  Spencer  and 
Emerson,  204. 

Inward  ideals,  transforming  power  of, 
205. 

James,  William,  "Varieties  of  Religious 
Experience"  by,  cited  on  mysticism 
as  essence  of  religion,  37 ;  on  free- 
dom of  will,  78;  quoted  on  the 
subliminal,  168  note ;  on  time,  240 ; 
on  prayer,  301,  302 ;  theory  of 
the  subliminal  consciousness  cited, 
305 ;  its  outcome  in  pluralism  and 
individualism,  321-324. 

Jesus,  parables  of,  illustrate  meaning 
of  life  in  relation  to  an  ideal,  12 ; 
teachings  in  Synoptic  Gospels,  16- 
17;  spiritual  community  for,  18- 
19 ;  fundamental  ideas  in  gospel 
of,  389. 

Judgment,  day  of,  56;  individual, 
168;  of  unseen  ideal,  an  element 
of  religious  experience,  453. 

Eant,  categorical  imperative,  116, 
388 ;  quoted  on  inspiration  of 
genius,  140 ;  autonomy  the  essence 
of  conscious  will,  for,  142 ;  moral 
responsibility  rests  on  freedom,  153. 

Karma,  214,  215,  216. 


Kempis,  Thomas  h,  "Imitation  of 
Christ"  by,  cited  on  solitary  life 
of  the  cloister,  105;  "Imitation  of 
Christ"  quoted  on  renunciation  of 
temporal  for  eternal  life,  226-228; 
mystical  prayer  of,  quoted,  288; 
self-renunciation  keynote  of,  342 ; 
prayer  of,  quoted,  344 ;  quoted  on 
surrender  to  the  Ideal,  417,  418. 

"Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel,"  cited 
on  conflict  of  moral  and  aesthetic, 
428  note. 

Le  Bon,  Gustave,  "The  Crowd"  by, 
quoted  on  the  social  religious  con- 
sciousness, 114. 

Liberalism,  tends  to  Naturalism,  55. 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  cited  on  devotion 
to  an  ideal,  12. 

Longfellow,  Samuel,  hymn  by,  quoted 
on  ethical  religious  consciousness, 
95-96. 

Love,  Divine,  is  form  in  which  Chris- 
tian consciousness  to-day  pictures 
absolute  personality,  407 ;  in  the 
"Divine  Comedy,"  408;  har- 
monizes opposition  between  aes- 
thetic and  moral,  individual  and 
social  experiences,  omnipotence  and 
personality  of  God,  410. 

Magic,  according  to  Frazer,  263; 
formulae  and  incantations  as  prayer, 
263-271 ;  examples  of  sympathetic 
and  imitative,  from  East  Indies, 
Papua,  Malay,  Burma,  265-266; 
of  the  Name,  illustrated  by 
Atharva  Veda  hymns,  etc.,  266- 
267. 

Magnus,  Albertus,  "Scholastic  Mysti- 
cism" by,  quoted,  343, 

Man,  his  opposing  tendencies,  439. 

Manichean  dualism,  influence  on  St. 
Augustine,  148. 

"Many,"  present  emphasis  on  the, 
343-344 ;  tendency  of  Pragmatic 
Philosophy  to  the,  as  opposed  to 
the  "one,"  366;  and  "one"  form 
of  the  Way  of  Life,  208;  see  "One 
and  Many." 

Mars,  Father,  prayer  by,  quoted,  278. 

Martineau,  James,  conception  of  free- 
dom, 153 ;  petitional  prayer  of, 
quoted,  282 ;  mystical  prayer  of, 
quoted,  289 ;  sacrifice  to  the  Ideal, 
417;    418. 

Materialism,  displaced  by  the  "psy- 
chical," 37. 

Matheson,  George,  "O  Love  that  Will 
Not     Let     Me     Go "   quoted     on 


INDEX 


489 


"grace,"  131;  quoted  on  self- 
surrender  to  the  ideal,  417. 

Matter,    375;    for  Bergson,   379-381. 

McDougall,  quoted  on  rhythm,  461 
note. 

Meredith,  George,  on  the  irrevocable 
deed,  70 ;  novel  by,  cited  on  for- 
giveness, 72-73;  "A  Faith  on 
Trial"  quoted,  457  note. 

Merit,  132-136 ;  an  active  experience, 
137. 

Mind  and  Body,  problem  of,   190. 

Miracles,    as   test   of   value,    170-171. 

Mohammed,  cited  on  solitude,  105. 

Mohammedanism,  motor  type  of  reli- 
gious consciousness  in,  101. 

Molinos,  Miguel  de,  mystical  ex- 
perience described  by,  93 ;  quoted 
on  self-renouncing  self,  343. 

Monastic  system,  supreme  example  of 
flight  from  the  world,   192. 

Monasticism,  social  character  of,  120 ; 
an  attempt  to  solve  the  problem 
of  the  "inner  and  outer,"  193; 
of  the  West,  contrasted  with  the 
Oriental,  230 ;  value  of  its  social 
structure,  231. 

Montgomery,  J.,  quoted  on  "grace," 
125. 

Morality,  ideality  of,  24 ;  a  serial  pro- 
cess, 28;  goal  infinitely  removed, 
for,  32;  protests  against  "eternal" 
attitude,  229;  problem  of,  366; 
fundamental  principle  of,  406 ; 
pure,  407;    Russell  on,  477. 

Mozoomdar,  prayer  of,  quoted,  282; 
on  prayer,  338. 

Miiller,  George,  efficacy  of  prayer  for, 
300. 

Miinsterberg,  on  limitation  of  scientific 
construction  of  cause  and  effect, 
144 ;  on  fluctuating  attention,  461 
note. 

Mutability,  434-439 ;  Bergson  on, 
436. 

Mystery  cults,  attitude  of  impartial 
worship  in  Oriental,  478. 

Mystery  religions  appeal  to  the  emo- 
tional nature,  36  ;  union  with  God 
characteristic  motive  of,  400. 

Mystic,  the,  a  religious  genius,  87 ; 
his  concern  is  the  inner  life,  90 ; 
twofold  way  of  life  for,  91 ;  his 
experience  is  unique,  92 ;  descrip- 
tion of  his  experience,  92-94 ;  his 
experience  immediate  and  ultimate, 
466-457. 

Mystical,  experience,  unable  to  inter- 
pret all  forms  of  religious  experi- 
ence, 38 ;  an  individual  experience, 


86 ;  religious  consciousness  and 
ethical  religious  consciousness,  86 ; 
vs.  ethical  experience,  87-103 ; 
summary  of  opposition  and  criti- 
cism of  results,  366 ;  opposition 
reconciled,  398;  type  of  prayer, 
examples  of,  287-290. 

Mystic-individualistic,  consciousness, 
illustrations  of,  103-104. 

Mysticism,  a  recurrent  phenomenon, 
36 ;  an  immediate  and  individual 
experience,  44-^5 ;  a  philosophical 
system  and  a  living  experience,  91 ; 
immediacy  of  the  experience,  91- 
92,  456-457;  new  scientific,  233- 
234 ;  limitations  of,  468 ;  danger 
of,  468-469;  element  of  value 
in,  469. 

Mystics,  Salvation  for  Oriental  and 
Christian,  123  ;  self -renouncing  ex- 
perience of  later  Christian,  342; 
practical  and  social  elements  in 
experience  of  the,  394. 

Nash,  Heruy  Sylvester,  "The  Atoning 
Life"  by,  cited,  426  note. 

Naturalism,  tendency  toward,  55. 

Nature-tendency,  in  primitive  reli- 
gions, 271-272. 

Necessity,  doctrine  of,  144;  objection 
to,  144-145 ;  and  freedom,  141- 
167. 

Need,  a  source  of  religious  experience,  2. 

Neo-Pagan,  attitude,  369,  478;  ideal, 
360. 

Neo-Paganism,  present  tendency  to, 
360. 

Neo-Platonism,  mystical,  aesthetic  and 
ethical,  61. 

New  Thought  Movement,  form  of 
religious  mysticism  of  to-day,  37. 

Newman,  John  Henry,  description  of 
mystical  experience  in  "Dream  of 
Gerontius"  by,  94;  prayer  of, 
quoted,  152,  412. 

Nietzsche,  "transformation  of  all 
values"  disregarded  by  his  fol- 
lowers, 47;  abandoned  active 
social  life,  192 ;  the  Superman, 
350;  on  science,  354;  on  "Herd 
Morality,"  359 ;  Eternal  Recur- 
rence doctrine,  384r-385;  on 
dualism  in  world  of  art,  432- 
433 ;  on  time,  434 ;  "  Thus  Spake 
Zarathustra  "  quoted,  34 ;  quoted 
on  the  Superman,  135 ;  quoted  on 
the  rebellious  spirit,  351 ;  quoted 
on   the   "eternal   return,"    370. 

Nightingale,  Florence,  cited  on  devo- 
tion to  an  ideal,  11. 


490 


INDEX 


Nirvana,  described  in  terms  of  con- 
trast to  finite  state  of  existence, 
50-51;  meaning  of,  216-223; 
trances  of,  218-219 ;  as  defined  in 
Buddhistic  writings,  220 ;  con- 
sciousness, 221 ;  main  concern  is 
ethical,  223. 

Oldenberg,  quoted  on  Buddhism,   24. 

Omar  Khayyam's  Rubaiyat,  quoted 
on  the  static,  167. 

Omens,  295-296. 

"One,"  the,  enlightened  religious  con- 
sciousness has  tended  to,  342 ; 
emphasis  on,  352. 

*' One  and  Many,"  a  philosophic  prob- 
lem, 336 ;  problem  of,  in  Greek  and 
Hindoo  Philosophy,  371 ;  in  Stoic 
Philosophy,  373-375 ;  for  Plotinus, 
375-379,  385;  for  Bergson,  379, 
386;  for  Bradley,  382-384,  386; 
for  Nietzsche,  384-385;  the  true 
self  necessary  for  union  of,  386; 
union  of,  in  the  Greek  State,  392 ; 
in  Jesus*  thought  of  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven,  393 ;  in  the  mediaBval 
and  Catholic  churches,  393 ; 
united  by  a  spiritual  bond,  391 ; 
in  society,  394 ;  united  by  a  moral 
bond,  395 ;  opposition  overcome, 
405,  406;    united  in  love,  409. 

Original  energy,  in  various  modern 
philosophies,  258. 

Orphism,  of  Euripides' "  Bacchse,"  cited 
on  worid  weariness,  48 ;  an  attempt 
to  solve  moral  opposition,  61 ; 
religious  opposition  for,  62  ;  triadic 
form  of  religious  experience  ex- 
pressed in,  84. 

Outward  form  needed  to  give  inner 
ideal  concreteness,  205. 

Paganism,  of  present-day  restlessness, 
197. 

Palmer,     George     Herbert,     case     of 

,  separation  of  religion  and  morality 

cited    by,    26 ;     on    beauty,    448 ; 

"Life    of    George    Herbert"    by, 

107. 

Parker,  Theodore,  cited  on  authority 
of  individual  conscience,  168. 

Pascal,  mystical  prayer  of,  289 ; 
prayer  of,  410. 

Patagonian  prayer,  277. 

Pater,  Walter,  "Marius,  the  Epicu- 
rean" by,  cited  on  reality  as  the 
experience  of  the  moment,  43 ; 
quoted,  109  note. 

Paul,  St.,  his  Christianity,  19 ;  reli- 
gious opposition  for,  63 ;    mystical 


experience  described  by,  92  ;  motor 
type  of  religious  consciousness  de- 
scribed by,  97;  on  "grace,"  19, 
124-125,  130,  159,  163;  spiritual 
life  an  achievement,  132 ;  personal 
experience  of  sin  and  grace,  148- 
149;  doctrine  of  sin  and  grace, 
150 ;  doctrine  of  justification  by 
faith,  150-151 ;  on  determinism 
and  freedom,  151-153;  his  ex- 
perience of  prayer,  329-330. 

Personal  element,  354-357. 

Personality,  man's  highest  concept, 
187 ;  idealization  of  a,  188 ;  im- 
portance of,  to  religious  experience, 
364 ;  concept  of,  in  contemporary 
philosophy,  364-365;  its  danger, 
366 ;  nature  of,  389-391 ;  the  ulti- 
mate term  for  religion,  406 ;  man's 
task  and  goal  is  to  create,  426; 
the  reality  of  religious  experience, 
474. 

Pessimism,  outcome  of  scientific  in- 
terpretation of  world,  481. 

Petition  and  spiritual  prayer,  335. 

Pfleiderer,  Otto,  on  the  deity  in  primi- 
tive religions,  14,  273;  "Religion 
and  Historic  Faiths"  by,  cited  on 
the  opposition  of  the  cosmic  and 
moral,  58,  59,  61. 

Philosophy,  former  tendency  to  the 
"one,"  present  tendency  to  the 
"many,"  343. 

Pierce,  Charles,  on  conclusions  of 
science,  145. 

Plato,  the  "one"  in  the  system  of, 
371. 

Plotinus,  doctrine  of  dualism,  375- 
379. 

Plutarch,  refutation  of  Stoic  theodicy, 
375. 

Positivism,  attitude  of,  toward  time, 
211. 

Pragmatism,  365. 

Prayer,  social  nature  of  primitive, 
112 ;  external  strength  in  answers 
to,  157 ;  static  or  dynamic,  262- 
337 ;  elements,  tendencies  and 
oppositions  in,  262-263 ;  classes 
of,  263 ;  magic  type  of,  263-271 ; 
origin  of  petitional  type  of,  271- 
274 ;  nature  of,  in  Vedic  hymns, 
274-275;  development  of,  in 
religions  of  Greece  and  Israel  and 
in  Hebrew  Psalms,  275-276;  ex- 
amples of  petitional  type  of,  276- 
278 ;  transitional  group  of,  279- 
282 ;  for  spiritual  blessings  in 
petitional  form,  282-283;  two 
characteristics  of,   283-285:    trial 


INDEX 


491 


definition  of,  285;  as  communion, 
285-294;  social  aspects  of,  291- 
294;  as  divination,  294-297; 
universal  elements  of  religious 
experience  found  in,  297-298; 
place  of  man's  will  in,  299 ;  static 
and  dynamic  qualities  of  com- 
munion as,  299-300 ;  as  auto- 
suggestion, 301 ;  for  James,  301- 
302  ;  as  cure  of  functional  diseases, 
304 ;  ethical,  305 ;  an  individual 
and  social  experience,  307 ;  ex- 
perience in  case  of  sorrow,  309- 
310 ;  in  case  of  sin,  318 ;  method 
of  approach,  316 ;  efl&cacy  of,  317 ; 
ethical  or  spiritual  form  of,  328; 
efficacy  of,  329 ;  subliminal  self 
theory  of,  330;  a  will  attitude, 
331 ;  a  complex  experience,  331 ; 
suggestion  and  efficacy  of,  333 ; 
as  attitude  of  self-control  and  in- 
sight, 336 ;  social  and  individual, 
337  ;  a  rhythmic  state,  337  ;  static 
and  dynamic,  337-338;  for  Mo- 
zoomdar,  338. 

Prayer-mill  of  Thibetan  Buddhists, 
178-179. 

"Prayer  to  Maruts,  the  Storm  Gods," 
quoted  on  "grace,"  125. 

Psalms,  ideal  goal  described  in,  51- 
52 ;  religious  opposition  expressed 
in,  63;  quoted  on  "grace,"  127- 
128;  quoted  on  permanence  of 
God,  251 ;  quoted  on  prayer,  279 ; 
union  with  divine,  449. 

"  Psychical,"  displaces  the  old  material- 
ism, 37. 

Psycho-physical  causation,  fails  to 
interpret  efficacy  of  prayer,  300- 
301. 

Pscho-physical  parallelism,  as  solution 
of  sin  and  evil,  76 ;  defect  of,  301. 

Psychotherapeutics,  a  type  of  scientific 
religion,  465. 

Puffer,  Ethel  D.  (Mrs.  Brewster),  quoted 
on  aesthetic  experience,  440. 

Puritanism,  inner  and  outer  aspects 
of,  194-195. 

Pusey,  Edward  Bouverie,  attitude  of 
renunciation  described  by,  310-311. 

Pyramid  Texts  of  Egypt,  5. 

Quakers,  way  of  salvation  for,  123 ; 
cited  on  individual  religious  con- 
sciousness, 106. 

*'Quies,"  principle  of,  226;  criticism 
of,  229-230. 

Rationalism,  difficulty  with  modem, 
162. 


Rationalists,  168. 

Rationality  of  universe,  458. 

Rauschenbusch,  "Prayer  for  Working- 
men"  by,  quoted,  293. 

Reality,  of  pure  experience,  37-38; 
for  Bradley,  382-384,  386;  for 
the  religious  experience,  458; 
sought  by  Pragmatists,  Mystics, 
etc.,  459. 

Reason,  23. 

Rebels,  of  the  Romantic  Movement, 
347 ;  of  the  present  day,  351 ; 
future  type  of,  360 ;  real  issue  for, 
387. 

Redemption,  for  Augustine,  129;  for 
Nietzsche,  385. 

Religion,  ideality  of,  2;  ethical 
development  of,  traced  in  the 
religion  of  Israel,  14-17  ;  universal- 
ity of,  21 ;  its  dependence  on 
reason,  22-23 ;  spiritual  basis  of, 
endangered  by  the  "immediate" 
theories,  47 ;  earliest  form  of, 
according  to  Pfleiderer,  59;  a 
practice,  85 ;  and  the  time  stream, 
237 ;  its  essence,  244 ;  needs  an 
adequate  metaphysic,  385 ;  per- 
sonality the  ultimate  term  for, 
406;  of  the  inner  life  needs  outer 
forms,  423  ;  modern  scientific  type 
of,  465 ;  its  value  recognized  by 
scientists,  465 ;  its  mission,  470 ; 
of  humanity,  187-188  ;  of  science, 
failure  of,  465-466,  non-existent, 
46. 

Religion  and  morality,  24—36 ;  compari- 
son of  early  forms  of,  25 ;  distinc- 
tion  between,  26-28,  32-36;   406. 

Religious  attitude,  contrast  with 
present-day  attitude,  198;  value 
of,  472 ;  value  of,  for  Russell, 
477 ;  incompatible  with  scientific 
interpretation  of  universe,  481. 

Religious  ceremonies,  cyclic  processes, 
179. 

Religious  consciousness,  psychological 
paradox  of,  3 ;  goal  for,  described 
in  terms  contrasting  with  temporal 
existence,  50-54;  third  term  of 
the,  83-84;  ethical  motor  type  of, 
94-103 ;  examples  of  social,  117- 
120 ;  a  harmony  of  various  ex- 
periences, 121 ;  its  longing  for 
permanence,  212 ;  a  temporal 
process,  244 ;  reality  is  static  for 
the,  250-252;  dynamic  element 
of,  252;  "one-many"  form  of, 
341 ;  ideality  the  basic  fact  of, 
413 ;  reality  the  ideal  demanded 
by  the,  466;    its  goal,  474. 


492 


INDEX 


Religious  experience,  need  as  source 
of,  2  ;  ideality  of  man  as  source  of, 
3-6 ;  fear  as  source  of,  6-9 ;  not 
ground  for,  38 ;  reality  of,  39 ;  uni- 
versal elements  of,  41-65 ;  ideality 
and  immediacy  of,  41-42 ;  funda- 
mental question  for,  41 ;  universal 
form  of  a  triadic  relation,  42,  58,  84  ; 
elimination  of  all  purely  immediate 
experiences,  42-44 ;  elimination  of 
merely  "  natural  "  experiences,  45- 
46 ;  optimism  and  dissatisfaction  in, 
47-54 ;  opposition  for,  55-56 ; 
cosmic  and  moral  opposition,  58 ; 
opposition  in  concrete  experiences, 
62-64 ;  third  term  in  the  triadic 
relation,  83,  85,  see  Salvation  and 
Way  of  Life ;  triadic  form  as 
expressed  in  historical  religions, 
84 ;  varieties  of,  86 ;  opposition 
between  individual  and  social  types 
of,  103-121;  social  type  of,  110- 
121 ;  nature  of,  121 ;  interpreted 
in  terms  of  man's  ultimate  ideal, 
416-417;  not  an  illusion,  420; 
final  attitude  of,  449 ;  final  opposi- 
tion, 451 ;  exemplified  by  concept 
of  rhythm,  460-464. 

Religious  faith,  justification  of,  28-32. 

Religious  festivals,  cyclic  processes,  180. 

Religious  ideal,  content  changes,  21, 
470 ;  realization  of,  not  found  in 
natural  or  moral  life,  32-36;  a 
social  ideal,  415. 

Religious  rites  and  ritual,  cyclic 
processes,  178-179. 

"Religion  Worth  Having,  A,"  by  T.  N. 
Carver,  cited,  45 ;  cited  on  value 
of  religion  to  science,  465. 

Repentance,  meaning  of,  72-73. 

Restlessness  of  modern  life,  255-256. 

Rhythm,  structure  of,  461  note ;  an 
individual  and  social  experience, 
462;    significance  of,  462-464. 

Rhythmic,  phenomena  of  nature,  19 ; 
expression  of  surplus  emotion, 
185-186 ;  movement,  social  motif 
of,  186. 

Ribot,  "Diseases  of  the  Will"  by, 
quoted,  75. 

Riklin,  Dr.,  on  aniniism,  14. 

Rite  of  confession,  cyclic  process,  180. 

Roman  Breviary,  quoted  on  the  Way 
of  Life,  423. 

Roman  Catholic  church,  193. 

Romantic  Movement,  mirrored  in 
Goethe's  Faust,  347. 

Rosary,  the  cyclic  in  religion,  178. 

Rossetti,  Christina  G.,  prayers  of, 
quoted,  290,  470. 


Royce,  on  loyalty,  388;  "The  World 
and  the  Individual"  by,  cited  on 
self-representative  system,  397 ; 
cited  on  irrevocableness  of  deeds, 
458 ;  quoted  on  consciousness  and 
self-representation,  463;  "The 
Problem  of  Christianity"  cited  on 
the  atonement  doctrine,  473  note. 

Russell,  Hon.  Bertrand,  "The  Essence 
of  Religion,"  cited,  472  note; 
criticism  of  article  in  Hibhert 
Journal  by,  477-481. 

Ruysbrock,  mystical  experience  de- 
scribed by,  92-93 ;  quoted  on 
mystic-individualistic  conscious- 
ness, 104. 

Sales,  Francis  de,  mystical  experience 
described  by,  92. 

Salvation,  a  way  of  life,  84 ;  various 
ways  of,  123 ;  sources  of  the 
experience  of,  124;  by  "grace," 
20,  129-130,  142-143,  162;  for 
Buddhism,  214. 

Santayana,  George,  "Life  of  Reason" 
cited  on  cyclic  and  serial,  202 ; 
empiricism  and  mysticism  of, 
234. 

Schopenhauer,  on  freedom  of  the  will, 
155. 

Science,  creative  imagination  of,  4-6; 
and  religion,  465. 

Scientific  attitude,  vs.  appreciative 
attitude,  467  note. 

Scott,  Capt.,  cited  on  devotion  to  an 
ideal,  11. 

Scudder,  E.,  quotation  on  "grace,"  125. 

Self,  problem  of  the,  387-388;  place 
of  the,  in  various  philosophies, 
385 ;  way  of  attaining  the  true, 
395 ;  the  true,  a  self  of  selves, 
405 ;  man's  ideal  is  a  universal, 
414 ;  problem  of  self-assertive,  and 
self-renouncing,  352-366. 

Self-realization,  452. 

Self-renunciation,  way  of  salvation, 
123. 

Self-representative  system,  397. 

Self-sacrifice,  396. 

Self-surrender,  470  note. 

Serial,  process,  177 ;  and  cyclic  forms, 
186-187. 

Shelley,  quoted  on  transitoriness  of 
life,  210 ;  on  interrelatedness  of 
forms  of  religious  consciousness, 
249 ;  a  rebel  against  external 
authority,  349;  "Prometheus  Un- 
bound" by,  an  example  of  rebellion 
of  Romantic  Movement,  349-350; 
cited,  370. 


INDEX 


493 


Silesius,  Angelus,  quotation  by,  366. 

Sin,  existence  of,  questioned,  65 ; 
definition  of,  66,  78;  and  forgive- 
ness, 69-73 ;  consequences  of 
voluntary,  70 ;  existence  of  real, 
73-78 ;  types  of  sinners,  74 ;  and 
freedom  of  will,  74,  77 ;  and  evil, 
75  ;  a  metaphysical  problem,  76  ; 
existence  of,  77 ;  its  consequences 
endless,  80  ;  and  freedom,  141-143  ; 
cause  of,  in  modern  view,  143 ; 
Paul's  doctrine  of,  150;  and  the 
prayer  experience,  318-320 ;  and 
ignorance,  320. 

Smith,  Robertson,  on  Jinni  and  gods, 
8,  15;  "The  Religion  of  the 
Semites"  cited  on  "taboo,"  13 
note ;  on  the  blood  bond,  25 ;  on 
social  element  in  religion,  111-112. 

Social,  authority  vs.  individual  judg- 
ment, 168 ;  justice,  the  modern 
ideal,  346  ;   result  of,  358-359. 

Social  consciousness,  197-198,  324-327. 

Social,  milieu,  limits  man's  freedom, 
146 ;  tendency  in  primitive  religion, 
272. 

Social  religious  consciousness,  instances 
of,  119-121. 

Social  religious  experience,  classes  of, 
112-113;  as  emotional,  114;  re- 
vealed in  public  thought,  115;  as 
socialization  of  the  will,  115;  as 
mystical  union,  116;  in  concep- 
tion of  the  church  universal,  117. 

Social  scientific  consciousness,  333,  334. 

Social  service,  368-369 ;  religion  of, 
464. 

Socialism,  195 ;  its  value  and  limita- 
tions, 469. 

Socialistic  Utopia,  as  a  solution,  194. 

Socrates,  quoted  on  individual  vs. 
social  judgment,  173  ;  prayer  of,  283. 

Sorrow,  and  the  prayer  experience, 
309-317 ;  and  sin  and  the  prayer 
experience,  318-320;  religion  of, 
403 ;  mystery  of,  405 ;  in  uni- 
verse, 445. 

Spencer,  Edmund,  quoted  on  intimate 
relation  of  inner  and  outer,  204. 

Spencer,  Edward  Glenfaun,  "Unto 
These  Least"  by,  quoted  on  social 
service  ideal,  346. 

Spirit,  its  nature,  463. 

Spiritual  religion,  essence  of,  452,  454. 

Spiritual  tendency  in  religion,  177. 

Starbuck,  cited  on  religious  opposition, 
64 ;  on  sin,  75 ;  on  temperamental 
differences  between  man  and 
woman,  258-259;  on  suggestion, 
303-304. 


Static,  universe,  result  of,  254 ;  reli- 
gious consciousness  seeks  the,  257; 
objection  to,  conception,  257; 
forms  of  religious  experience,  260- 
262. 

Static-dynamic,  form  of  the  Way  of 
Life,  249 ;  opposition  in  tempera- 
ment, 258-259;  and  religion  and 
morality,  259 ;  problem  of,  in  re- 
lation to  prayer,  262,  337-338. 

Stevenson,  R.  L.,  "If  This  Were 
Faith"  by,  quoted  on  ethical  reli- 
gious consciousness,  100 ;  "unique- 
ness" in  writings  of,  110;  prayer 
by,  291-292. 

Stoic,  attitude  expressed  in  Swin- 
burne's "Hertha"  and  Nietzsche's 
Superman,  135;  Philosophy,  prob- 
lem of  "one  and  many"  for,  373- 
375. 

Stoicism,  religious  attitude  of,  61 ; 
religious  opposition  for,  62  ;  ethical 
elements  of,  100-101 ;  idea  of 
mutability  in,  433. 

Stoics,  the,  ideal  goal  of,  52. 

Subjective  idealism,  35-36 ;    456, 

Subliminal  consciousness,  inspiration 
of  genius,  140-141 ;  value  of  its 
dicta,  168-169 ;  and  eflScacy  of 
prayer,  301 ;  more  than  self-con- 
scious personality,  302 ;  suggesti- 
ble, 305-306 ;  its  nature  and  value, 
321-324. 

Subliminal  experience,  170. 

Subliminal  self,  its  nature,  156,  305 ; 
a  suggestible  and  social  self,  307. 

Sudermann's  Magda,  a  rebel,  351. 

Suggestible  consciousness,  the,  and  the 
absolute  ideal,  337. 

Suggestion,  social,  302 ;  examples  of, 
334  ;  not  ultimate,  306  ;  value  of, 
306,  308;  and  the  efficacy  of 
prayer,  333-336. 

Supreme  Good,  for  Augustine,  151. 

Susa,  mystical  experience  described 
in  "Vision  of  Eternal  Wisdom" 
by,  93. 

Swedenborg,  relation  of  body  and 
soul  for,  203. 

Swinburne,  quoted  on  subjective 
idealism,  36;  "Hertha"  by, 
quoted,  135  note. 

Sympathetic  magic,  264,  265. 

Taboo,  in  primitive  prayer,  271. 

Tagore,  Rabindranath,  quotation  on 
social  service  ideal,  346. 

Tauler,  quoted  on  mysticism,  91 ; 
mystical  experience  described  by, 
92;     a   prayer    by,    quoted,    315} 


494 


INDEX 


on  self-surrender,  342;  religion  a 
thing  of  the  inner  life  for,  423. 

Taylor,  Graham,  on  change,  438. 

Temporal,  life  for  Buddhism,  225; 
life  emphasized  at  present,  232 ; 
life  contrasted  with  Nirvana,  237 ; 
alone  reduces  to  eternal  recurrence, 
239 ;  process  as  a  universal  creative 
will,  243;  and  Eternal,  forms  of 
Way  of  Life,  208-247;  opposition 
between,  242;  union  of,  243-244, 
245,  246,^247. 

Tennyson,  "In  Memoriam"  by,  cited 
on  the  mystical  experience,  92 ; 
"Ulysses"  and  "Wages"  by, 
quoted  on  motor  type  of  religious 
consciousness,  98  note,  99;  quoted 
on  relation  between  God  and  man, 
191 ;  on  primal  energy,  380 ;  on 
change  and  reality,  437. 

Theresa,  St.,  autobiography  of,  quoted, 
103-104;    mystical  prayer  of,  288. 

Thomas  of  Celano,  "  Dies  Irse"  quoted, 
57. 

Thompson,  Francis,  poem  by,  102. 

Time,  its  nature,  208-209;  for  the 
religious  experience,  237 ;  a  form 
of  the  wiU,  230,  249 ;  for  WiUiam 
James,  240;  quantitative,  240;  a 
tragic  fact,  434. 

"Timeless,"  moments  of  life,  236-237. 

Tolstoy,  Count  Leo,  "Resurrection" 
by,  cited  on  consciousness  of  sin,  55 
note ;  cited  on  flight  from  the 
world,  192 ;  on  personality,  390. 

Transitoriness,  an  essential  characteris- 
tic of  human  life,  208 ;  meaning- 
lessness  of,  210-211. 

Trust,  fundamental  religious  attitude, 
453 ;  justification  of,  454. 

Truth,  tests  of,  168. 

Tyler,  John,  quoted  on  ethical  type 
of  religious  consciousness,  99  note. 

"Udana,"  translation  from,  223. 
Unity,  modem  tendency  toward,  353. 
"  Upanishads,"    quoted   on   individual 

type     of    religious     consciousness, 

106;     on    "grace,"    126-127;     on 

the  "one,"  371,  372. 
Utopian  ideals,  expression  of  religious 

opposition  in,  64. 

Values,  modern  transformation  in,  344  ; 

modern  test  of,  369. 
Van   Dyke,    Henry,   poems   by,    cited 

on  social  service  ideal,  346. 
Van  Gennep,  A.,  "La  Formation  des 

Legendes"    cited   on   evolution   of 

the  conception  of  God,  13-14. 


Vaughn,  poem  by,  quoted  on  self- 
surrender  to  God,  311. 

Vedic  Hymns,  quotation  on  "grace" 
from  the,  125;  examples  of  peti- 
tional  type  of  prayer  from  the,  277. 

Virgil's  ^neas,  cited  on  motor  type 
of  religious  consciousness,  97. 

Warren,  Henry,  "Buddhism  in  Trans- 
lation," 24. 

Washington,  Booker  T.,  "The  Man 
Furthest  Down"  cited  on  hostility 
of  religion  and  morality,  26   note. 

Way  of  Life,  its  nature,  84-85 ;  series 
of  oppositions  in,  85-86;  its 
essence,  121 ;  chief  oppositions 
in,  123-124;  its  source,  124; 
nature  and  source  of  the,  207 ; 
its  forms,  208;  popular  way  to- 
day, 421 ;  varied  form  of,  423. 
See  Salvation. 

Wells,  H.  G.,  "New  Machiavelli"  by, 
quoted  on  mutability  and  despair, 
435-436. 

Wesley,  Charles,  quotation  by,  on 
"grace,"  125. 

Wesleyans,  cited  on  individual  reli- 
gious consciousness,  106. 

Whitman,  Walt,  "Prayer  of  Colum- 
bus" quoted,  417-418. 

Wiley,  Hiram  O.,  "He  Leads  Us  On" 
by,  quoted  on  "grace,"  131-132. 

Will,  its  essence  and  ideality,  244; 
and  prayer,  331. 

Wilson,  President,  quoted  on  the  new 
age,  235. 

Woolley,  Celia,  poem  by,  quoted  on 
personality,  357-358. 

Woolman,  John,  prayer  in  sorrow,  315. 

Wordsworth,  William,  mystical  con- 
sciousness described  by,  93-94 ; 
"Ode  to  Duty"  by,  cited  on  ethical 
religious  consciousness,  95  note; 
quoted  on  morality,  153. 

Worldly  tendency  in  religious  experi- 
ence, a  cyclic  process,  177. 

Worship,  acts  of,  113;  man's  need  of, 
187;  value  of,  422;  "selective" 
and  "impartial,"  for  Russell,  477- 
479. 

Wotton,  Sir  Henry,  hymn  by,  quoted 
on  escape  from  time  world,  225. 

Zoroaster,    prayers   from   the   Gathas 

of,  287-288. 
Zoroastrianism,  example  of  active  type 

of     religious     consciousness,     100; 

conflict       between       moral       and 

naturalistic     conceptions     of     the 

divine  in,   136. 


INDEX 


495 


SUPPLEMENTARY  BIBLICAL  REFERENCES 


1  Corinthians    12 :  4 ;    10  :  17,    quoted 

on  mysticism,  117 ;  12,  quoted  on 
the  many  in  one,  392 ;  13,  quoted 
on  love,  407. 

2  Corinthians  12,  quoted   on   prayer, 

330. 

Deuteronomy  15,  cited  on  ethical  re- 
ligious consciousness,  95  ;  31  :  6, 
quoted  on  prayer,  336. 

Ephesians  6  :  10-17,  quoted  on  ethical 
religious  consciousness,  97. 

Hosea  2,  3,  11,  cited  on  ethical  religious 
consciousness,  98. 

Isaiah  60,  61,  62,  quoted  on  the  reli- 
gious opposition,  63  ;  53,  quoted  on 
the  ethical  religious  consciousness, 
98 ;  40 :  30,  31 ;  30  :  5,  quoted  on 
prayer,  336. 

Jeremiah  20  :  7-9,  quoted  on  individual 
religious  experience,  109 ;  31,  33, 
quoted  on  individual  religious  ex- 
perience, 110. 

John  10 :  10-14,  quoted  on  meaning  of 
life  in  relation  to  an  ideal,  12 ;  15  :  4, 
6,  10  ;  17  :  10,  11 ;  5  :  21,  quoted 
on  mysticism,  116;  15  :  13,  quoted 
on  ethical  religious  consciousness, 
98 ;  21,  22,  quoted  on  temporal  and 
eternal,  246 ;  10 :  10,  cited  on  goal 
of  Christianity,  360  note;  15, 
quoted  on  love,  409. 


Kings,  conflict  between  moral  and  nat- 
uralistic conceptions  of  the  divine 
in,  136. 

Mark  8  :  34-36,  quoted  on  meaning  of 
life  in  relation  to  an  ideal,  12. 

Matthew  13  •  44,  45,  quoted  on  mean- 
ing of  life  in  relation  to  an  ideal, 
12;  6,  quoted  on  ethical  religioua 
consciousness,  96 ;  6  :  9,  45  ;  7:11, 
cited  on  individual  value,  254 ;  13, 
quoted  on  the  many  in  one,  393. 

Philippians  3  :  13,  14,  quoted  on 
motor  type  of  reUgious  conscious- 
ness, 97 ;  3:9,  10,  quoted  on 
"  grace,"  149 ;  3,  Paul's  idea  of 
self-determination  in,  152. 

Proverbs  6  :  23,  quoted  on  uniqueness 
of  religious  experience,  110. 

Revelation  21  : 1,  4 ;  22  : 5,  quoted  on 
the  static  demanded  by  the  religious 
consciousness,  257. 

Romans  12  : 5,  quoted  on  mysticism, 
117;  8:29,  30,  ;  quoted  on  deter- 
minism and  necessity,  142 ;  8—12, 
cited  on  Paul's  doctrine  of  fore- 
ordination,  151 ;  7  : 7-15,  quoted  on 
"  grace,"  159  ;  6  :  3-11,  cited  on 
mystical  union  with  the  divine, 
400. 

Zephaniah  1,  quoted  on  Day  of  Judg- 
ment, 67. 


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Commentary  on  Mark 

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earlier  volumes.  Dr.  Jacobus  is  a  Bible  scholar  of  rare  training.  In 
this  Introduction  and  in  the  Notes  which  accompany  the  text  of  the 
Gospel  he  provides  much  valuable  matter  which  will  be  of  assistance  to 
the  beginner  in  systematic  Bible  study  as  well  as  to  the  more  advanced 
students.  His  judgment  on  difficult  or  obscure  passages  is  sound  and 
his  conclusions  warranted. 

The  Episcopal  Church,  Its  Faith  and  Order 

By  GEORGE  HODGES 
Dean  of  the  Episcopal  Theological  School 

Cloth^  i2mo,  $i^S 
This  book  is  intended  for  three  groups  —  the  younger  clergymen 
who  will  find  in  the  analyses  prefaced  to  the  chapters  material  that  will 
be  valuable  in  their  own  teaching,  members  of  confirmation  classes  who 
will  be  helped  by  the  summaries  which  it  contains,  and  persons  who 
are  desirous  of  knowing  the  doctrine  and  discipline  of  the  Episcopal 
Church.  The  volume  embodies  the  results  of  twenty  years'  experience 
in  the  instruction  of  students  in  the  Episcopal  Theological  School.  In 
the  midst  of  many  natural  differences  of  emphasis  and  opinion  those 
positions  are  indicated  in  this  work  in  which  most  members  of  the 
Episcopal  Church  are  substantially  agreed. 


THE   MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Ayenna  New  York 


NEW  BOOKS  ON  RELIGION 


The  Man  of  Nazareth 


By  FREDERICK   L.  ANDERSON 

Cloth^  j2mo^  $ijOO 

This  is  a  study  of  the  life  of  Christ  written  not  for  theologians,  but 
for  the  average  man  and  woman.  The  most  important  problems  about 
Jesus  and  his  career  and  the  conditions  of  his  time  are  related  with  a 
simplicity  that  will  commend  the  book  to  those  who  find  so  much  of 
religious  writing  vague  and  unsatisfactory.  Dr.  Anderson  has  not 
sought  to  solve  disputed  questions,  but  rather  to  present  in  a  clear 
light  the  broad  and  generally  accepted  facts  of  the  Saviour's  life,  and 
while  there  is  no  ponderous  show  of  learning  the  volume  is  undoubt- 
edly the  result  ^of  many  years  of  hard  study  and  application  to  the 
subject. 

Live  and  Leam 

By  WASHINGTON   GLADDEN 

Cloth,  j2mo,  $j.oo 

An  exceedingly  practical  little  book  is  this  one  in  which  the  distin- 
guished clergyman  and  writer  seeks  to  impress  upon  his  readers  the 
necessity  of  getting  possession  of  themselves.  Learning  how  to  see, 
how  to  think,  how  to  speak,  how  to  hear,  how  to  give,  how  to  serve, 
how  to  win  and  how  to  wait  —  these  are  the  author's  themes.  The 
chapters  are  interesting  because  of  the  happy  fashion  in  which  Dr. 
Gladden  clothes  his  thoughts ;  they  are  valuable  in  that  they  contain 
the  wise  counsel  of  a  mature  mind  in  which  are  arranged  and  stored 
the  products  of  a  long  experience.  The  work  is  especially  suited  to 
young  people  —  of  the  high  school  age,  for  example.  It  will  assist 
them  to  obtain  and  maintain  a  proper  adjustment  toward  life.  It  will, 
however,  be  read  with  no  less  profit  by  all  whose  minds  are  open,  who 
are  willing  to  learn,  whether  they  be  sixteen  or  sixty. 


THE   MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


